Photos By Gail
African American designer Ann Lowe (1898 – 1981) learned to sew from her dressmaker mother, Janie Cole, and her grandmother, Georgia Thompkins. One of her earliest pleasures was crafting fabric flowers, a skill that became one of the defining characteristics of her beautifully constructed occasion gowns for debutante and brides. This Evening Dress designed by Lowe for A. F Chantilly (1968) presents a terrific example of this skill.
Photo By Gail
Allan D’Arcangelo’s portrait of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her young daughter Caroline adopts the bold style of modern advertising, epitomized by the broad areas of bright, unmodulated color. The image trades on the Kennedy’s brand status and visual legibility: its sitters are recognizable merely by virtue of their signature hairstyles and clothing, as well as Jackie’s string of pearls. Made just months before President Kennedy’s assassination1963, Madonna and Child’s take on an age-old religious theme is at once optimistic and disquieting. With their bright halos and featureless faces, Jackie and Caroline appear as contemporary icons and saviors even as they are reduced to mute images for public consumption.
Photographed in the Whitney Museum in NYC.