By Her Own Design

A Novel of Ann Lowe, Fashion Designer to the Social Register

Piper Huguley

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063059757
• Print ISBN:
  9780063059740
• Subtopic: Literature General

The incredible untold story of how Ann Lowe, a Black woman and granddaughter of slaves, rose above personal struggles and racial prejudice to design and create one of America's most famous wedding dresses of all time for Jackie Kennedy.

1953, New York City

Less than a week before the society wedding of the year where Jacqueline Bouvier will marry John F. Kennedy, a pipe bursts at Ann Lowe's dress shop and ruins eleven dresses, including the expensive wedding dress, a dress that will be judged by thousands. A Black designer who has fought every step of the way, Ann knows this is only one struggle after a lifetime of them in this gripping historical fiction. She and her seamstresses will find the way to re-create the dresses. It may take all day and all night for the next week to accomplish the task, but they will do it.

1918, Tampa

Raised in Jim Crow Alabama, Ann learned the art of sewing from her mother and her grandmother, a former slave, who are the most talented seamstresses in the state. After Ann elopes at twelve with an older man who soon proves himself to be an abusive alcoholic, her dreams of becoming a celebrated designer seem to be put on hold. But then a wealthy Tampa socialite sees Ann's talent and offers her an amazing opportunity—the chance to sew and design clothing for Florida's society elite. Taking her young son in the middle of the night, Ann escapes her husband and embarks on the adventure of a lifetime.

Based on the true story of one of the most famous designers of the twenties through the sixties who has since been unjustly forgotten, By Her Own Design is an unforgettable historical novel of determination despite countless obstacles and a triumph celebrated by the world.

Part I

The Question

Chapter One

Alabama

1907–1912

My grandma, Georgia Cole, told me the key to surviving as a Black person in the world is to get you some good white people. She told it to my mother, Janie, and she told it to me. She said, get right in there with them. Get up under that right butt cheek if you have to. So we did. That’s how we Cole women have survived for so long.

Clayton, Alabama, even though it is the county seat, is a piece of spit on the map of the state. It’s nothing and the General’s women, as they called us, weren’t looking to get wiped away. Ever since I was born, two years before the start of the new century, I kept hearing about my grandparents, Georgia and General Cole, and how they outsmarted Grandma’s owners so that they spit in the eye of the law and lived free in the deepest part of the deep South.

To survive in Clayton, Alabama, we were what some call good Negroes. But we were the ones living and they weren’t. For instance, in order to marry Grandma in the eyes of the Lord and the law, General Cole went to my grandmother’s owner and offered him twice what she was worth. The master took his money but made him promise one thing. Old General Cole, a man of his word, promised not to move away so the mistress of the plantation might still benefit from Georgia’s talented needle in creating beautiful dresses just for her.

They shook on it and agreed. So Georgia got to be free; my mammy, Janie, was born free; and everyone was happy. To protect her, Georgia taught her only daughter how to sew. My mother was working hard by the time she was eight years old. She was just a child, but she had to work them little fingers to baste together the big pieces of dresses with wide stitches so that her mother could send them through the sewing machine. Georgia and Janie. They made a great team for about ten years. Then, somehow, my mama got with child, and Georgia cast her out from her house. For about two weeks. Then she brought her back and took care of her when Sallie was born.

“Then, when she came bigged up with you, I said nothing. I had a feeling you was going to be something special, Bird.” Grandma Georgia called me Bird, ’cause she said I was like a hummingbird, flitting around from flower to flower.

I wouldn’t hurt Sallie’s feelings for anything in the world, so we never discussed how I was Grandma Georgia’s favorite. I always got a little extra by her, like how when I was five she let me scrape out a little plot of ground and plant flowers on it.

My mother protested. “We can’t eat flowers.”

“They’s pretty to look at,” Georgia told her. “It’s good to have something pretty to look at. Bird is a right good gardener, so when she get her white people, they might have her doing that work.”

“I’m not gone work outside,” I said, shocking them both. “I’m gone draw dresses and make ladies look like flowers. Just like you do.”

There was a moment of silence, then mother and daughter laughed together. I recall standing there watching them hold each other up, laughing at my naive viewpoint.

I kept on. “I’m gone wear a pretty dress to a ball too.”

That’s when they stopped laughing.

The look on my mother’s face got serious. “Bird, balls are for white people. It’s our job to help them get pretty to go to the balls, we aren’t the ones who go to the balls.”

My grandma waved her hands. “Don’t be telling her all of that now. She’ll learn it quick enough. She don’t understand anyway.”

But I did understand. Something deep inside me twisted up. I ran outside to see that some of my flowers had died off. They had that August look, like they were too full up to live. That was wrong. Why did flowers and a little girl’s dream of wearing a fancy ball dress have to die? That’s when I got The Idea.

My mother and grandmother were both at their machines, like always, and their feet pressed up and down on the treadles as they pushed through lengths of beautiful silk taffeta material, sewing peacock-blue dresses as well as bright jewel tones of ruby and green.

All around their swollen feet, cracked with white lines on the soles, lay snips of cloth. Back in those times, one of the ways you would keep a girl quiet was to have her work on quilt blocks. A young girl would work up several quilt blocks, so that she would have quilts ready for her hope chest and be ready for when she would get married. So it was my job to gather these scraps and make some determination to see what was fit for keeping for my quilts and what wasn’t.

I had just started to work on my own quilt blocks, but I still cut off small pieces of pretty fabric that didn’t get used. What if I took some of those waste scrap pieces and made flowers from them?

I cut some of these pieces and made petals. I put them together and made a silk Shasta daisy.

When I showed it to Grandma, she oohed and aahed. “What you gone do with it, Bird?”

Then the flower wilted a bit. “I don’t know. Look at it.”

“It’s mighty pretty, honey.”

I lowered it from her face and saw my mother watching me. I didn’t even bother to show it to her. I knew what she would say about something that had no purpose. At least a quilt could keep you warm. She smiled at me a bit but kept sewing. I put the flower into a box and returned to my quilt blocks, so that when I got the right number of quilts I could get married and be grown like them.

The whole thing about getting married confused me. My mother had no husband. Georgia had the General, who slept in the corner in a chair all day, drooling and spitting snuff into an old tin can. Why would I want such a thing as a husband? If I were going to make dresses that turned women into flowers, wouldn’t that be enough to keep me busy?

There were days that I longed to ask that question, but my mother and grandmother were always sewing. Sallie, my sister, did better at fitting when the time came, so she didn’t sew like they did. I tried not to remember the flower that I made, but I couldn’t help it. Whenever I cut and pieced up a new quilt block, I made a different flower out of scraps. When it was my mother’s birthday, I made a whole bouquet of silk roses for her. The surprised look on her face was what I aimed for, but the look went away. “These is mighty pretty, honey. You got your quilts working?”

“I do, Mama.”

“Good. I didn’t want you to be wasting all of this on me.”

“It’s not a waste, Mama.”

“Thank you, honey.” She stopped sewing for a minute, then did a rare thing. She grabbed me, holding me to her as if I were an egg, so as not to crush my little bird bones.

“You’ll have them forever,” I pointed out.

“I guess that’s a good thing.”

“’Cause real flowers die.”

Word got around about my flowers, and I started selling them for folks to pretty up their houses, hats, and dresses. The money did impress Mama and she put it aside for me in a little tin bank that she nailed to the floor. When I asked her why it was nailed to the floor, she said, “So you only get it when you are desperate. It’ll take a certain kind of strength for you to pull it up off the floor. I pray you ain’t never that kind of desperate, but you a little Negro girl. It’s gonna come. One day.”

I sure didn’t like the sound of that, but I kept on playing with my fabric flowers, making my quilts and selling some of both to people who liked the look of the stuff that I made. I decided to make myself my first dress to wear to church and I got some of my money before it went into the tin can to buy the goods at the store. I chose red with black polka dots. Grandma Georgia sure didn’t like the looks of that fabric draped upon my skinny behind. One day, I was cooking our dinner of beans and cornbread, and when they thought I wasn’t listening, she complained to my mama above the racket of the sewing machines.

“Janie, how you raising this one here? She don’t have no sense. No colored woman needs to be wearing any kind of red on her. Make her look like a harlot.”

“She’s only ten, Mama.”

“That’s old enough.” Grandma’s frown worked up in her voice.

“She look like a scrawny bird.”

My mama loved me, but she was only telling the truth. I sure did look like that. My fingers gripped just a little harder on the handle of the wooden spoon I used to stir the beans.

“Some likes them like that.”

Some who? I loosened my grip, pausing in my eavesdropping to think. Who likes what what way?

“We here for her. We have her.”

The tuts resounded in Grandma’s voice a little louder ’cause she had more gums than teeth. “Lord, the fox got many an evil plan to get into the henhouse. The General ain’t as spry as he used to be and can’t look out for his womenfolk.”

“We her family. We love her and we’ll protect her.”

“Just like that high yaller boy what’s sniffing around our Sal?” Grandma’s voice got real high then.

I nodded my head in agreement with Grandma. Now I understood. Sal was sure going down the wayward road and my heart thumped real slow in sadness at the thought of that awful boy and my Sallie. To be sure, she never took to sewing like the three of us. Me, Mama, and Grandma were the three sides of a triangle—all mitered together like a corner. Sallie’s talent was to make the dress seem like a second skin to the woman. So, even though you couldn’t see the results of Sal’s art, it was all in the way she helped make the dresses smooth to the body. I sure was going to ask her to help me with my red-and-black dress, soon as she could get her eyes away from that boy-man she kept eyeballing.

“I can’t nail the girls to the floor like a tin can bank, Mama.”

“That’s true enough. As soon as you could, you went off with . . .” That’s when the sewing machines went really fast to cover up my grandma’s words. Eavesdropping could be so frustrating at times. How was I going to learn anything around here? I tapped the spoon on the side of the pan to get all the mushed pinto beans off it.

They were finally getting to something interesting and fascinating, and they clammed right up. It wasn’t fair.

They must have known I was listening to them talk all along.

Sure enough, the next month Sal came home one morning, talking to Mama in our front room. Mama rose up and cried, holding on to my sister—a lot harder than she would hold me— like she was the coins in that tin bank.

Sal had this look on her face like she thought Mama had lost her mind. “It’s gone be fine. We’s getting married. I’m not going to be like you without a husband.”

Mama let Sal go and fixed her mouth firm, her tears drying up. “Well, just know that if yo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Part I: The Question
• Part II: The Answer
• Part III: The Dream Comes True
• Acknowledgments
• P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
• Praise
• Copyright
• About the Publisher