Inspired by designer Ann Lowe, Strawberry Mansion neighbors will talk fashion, identity and community on Saturday

In January, a Strawberry Mansion neighborhood group took a trip to visit the exhibit on Ann Lowe, a Black fashion designer, at the Winterthur Museum. Lowe, who was well known to wealthy white women in New York and Hollywood, is perhaps most famous now for designing the wedding gown Jacqueline Bouvier wore to marry then-Sen. John F. Kennedy.

While high-society clients knew who Ann Lowe was, her name was kept secret from the general public. That meant she never reaped the recognition, or the financial rewards, she might have received had she been white.

A group of about 20 women and four men (two of them teenagers) went to view the “Ann Lowe: American Couturier,” exhibit at the Wintherthur Museum in Delaware, said Lysa Monique Jenkins-Hayden, founder of the neighborhood organization.

The Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood and Homeowners Association announced a program called “Unsung and UnSung Sheroes: In The Black Community: Ann Lowe.”

As Inquirer columnist Elizabeth Wellington described the exhibit: Lowe had been born in Alabama before the turn of the 20th century to a family of enslaved dress designers. In 1928, Lowe moved to New York and designed debutante and wedding gowns for the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, and the du Ponts, who were among some of America’s richest families:

“She hand-painted giant, sparkling flowers on the aqua ballgown Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland wore to the 1946 Academy Awards, but she didn’t get credit for the dress; New York-based design house Sonia Gowns did,” Wellington wrote.

As a follow-up to that visit to Winterthur, and to fulfill a need that some of the people who visited the Lowe exhibit had to tell their own stories about fashion, the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood organization will present “Unsung and UnSung Sheroes: In The Black Community: Ann Lowe, Part 2,” from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday at the Historic Strawberry Mansion in Fairmount Park. It will be a community discussion to talk about how people’s fashion choices and life experiences affect their sense of identity, whether as a Black person, a woman, or any other identity they have.

“We are asking people to come out and share their fashion stories,” Jenkins-Hayden said. “We want people to bring photos of themselves, or of their grandparents and how they dressed, to talk about how the clothing they wore shaped their identities,” she said.

For example, Jenkins-Hayden said she spent her entire education in Catholic schools, so school uniforms still tend to inform her own fashion choice.

Jenkins-Hayden said the idea to visit Winterthur came from community member, Shirley Slaughter, a Strawberry Mansion resident and who was site manager for the Hatfield House, also in Fairmount Park. Jenkins-Hayden said when Slaughter, told her about the Ann Lowe exhibit, the community leader had not yet heard of the fashion designer.

At the Saturday program, they will show pictures of Ann Lowe’s gowns, and even from those pictures, Jenkins-Hayden said, people will be able to tell from the level of detail, how much of her soul went into the art of her design.

Lowe may have been “unrecognized and unnamed” during her lifetime, “but you can’t take away how much of herself she put into her dresses. People can try to duplicate them, but they can’t. "

“She made custom dresses for all those socialites. They were running in the same circles in New York and they wanted something custom-made just to fit who they were,” she said.

Seating is limited to 30 people for the in-person event, which takes place from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, at Historic Strawberry Mansion, 2450 Strawberry Mansion Drive, Philadelphia. People may also join by Zoom. To register for the event click here, or visit phillyneighborsunite.weebly.com and search for “Unsung and UnSung Sheroes: In The Black Community: Ann Lowe, Part 2.”