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Hey, I’m Zara Shanzay! Welcome to the first letter of “It’s a Woman’s World!” We will be starting in the United States of America, and learning about the resilient lives of three talented fashion designers; Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, Ann Lowe, and Pauline Trigère. Additionally, I searched for indigenous women to add to this letter about the USA, though unfortunately, Native American history in the US is widely unrecorded and there was not enough information on many Native American Designers of the past. However, there are so many incredible Native American women who have a powerful influence in the fashion world today, so I will link an article with their names here so you can support them and their art.
That being said, I hope that you learn something new from the three women I wrote about below.
To begin, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born in 1818 and lived until 1907. Elizabeth’s mother was literate at a time when only a small percent of slaves in the United States were, and passed this as well as her sewing skills to her daughter. Elizabeth served the Burwell Family in Virginia and endured years of physical and mental abuse from their family. She was raped for several years which resulted in the birth of her son, George.
Elizabeth, her mother, and her son were taken to St. Louis, Missouri, by a member of the Burwell Family because of the business opportunities there. However, the family struggled financially and relied on Elizabeth’s sewing skills to make them money. Elizabeth began to gain clients, very prominent wealthy women in society at the time, who wore her designs. Eventually, Elizabeth built her business and purchased her and her son’s freedom in 1855, 10 years before the ratification of the 13th amendment which abolished slavery. $1,200 was collected from her wealthy white clients and she spent years working hard to repay them.
In 1860 Elizabeth moved to Washington to start her business, her clients being very wealthy women. In 1861 one of her clients recommended her to first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln’s wife. Elizabeth Keckley became the first ladies personal dressmaker, and became a friend to her family.
Elizabeth used her talents to become a very successful business owner, and employed 20 women to her shop. During the Civil War (1861-1865) she and 40 women from her church joined forces to begin a relief association, The Contraband Relief Association, to help thousands of formerly enslaved people in the city (Washington DC). The organization provided them with food, clothing, medicine, and more.
Elizabeth then published her autobiography, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years A Slave, and Four Years in the White House. Many of her readers at the time believed the accounts of a free black woman violated norms of privacy, race, and social class, and a majority of people at the time were not interested in hearing her voice so she sold very little copies, especially given the suppression of the distribution of the book from the Lincoln family following a public scandal.
Despite the backlash, Elizabeth persevered as a dressmaker and began to teach many young black girls how to sew. She became the head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts at Ohio’s Wilberforce University and spent the final years of her life in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children, an institution that was descended from the same relief association she founded at the beginning of the Civil War.
Elizabeth is remembered as a seamstress and author who purchased her own freedom and helped thousands of other newly freed slaves in post Civil War America. Many of her original pieces and designs can be found in the Smithsonian, The Museum at FIT, and the Missouri History Museum. Her work inspired Sarah Jessica Parker’s 2022 Met Gala outfit, showing that art makes a lasting impact that transcends generations.
If you want to learn more about Elizabeth, I recommend reading the article from whitehousehistory.org as it goes more in-depth into her personal life experiences, or read her autobiography.
Citations for Elizabeth Keckley
“Elizabeth Keckly Remembered as a Dressmaker, Excluded as an Author | Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.” Womenshistory.Si.Edu, https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/elizabeth-keckly-remembered-dressmaker-excluded-author. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.
Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Our Years in the White House. New York Cosimoclassics, 2008.
Mann, Lina. “From Slavery to the White House: The Extraordinary Life of Elizabeth Keckly.” WHHA (En-US), 14 Sept. 2020, https://www.whitehousehistory.org/from-slavery-to-the-white-house-the-extraordinary-life-of-elizabeth-keckly.
Next, we will learn about Ann Lowe. Much of Ann’s life was “rediscovered” by art historian Margaret Powell, who wrote "Rediscovering 'Society’s Best Kept Secret': The Life and Work of Ann Lowe,” in 2012. Ann Lowe was born around 1898 (although the exact year is not known) until 1981. She was born right before what is known as Progressive Era, which was an era of business expansion and progressive reform in the United States, meaning they were trying to make changes in government, law, etc. Ann was raised in Montgomery, Alabama and both her mother and grandmother were also dressmakers and taught her to sew when she was only five years old. Ann was married at 12 years old, and dropped out of school at age 14. She had a son a year after her marriage.
Josephine Edwards Lee, a socialite, met Ann Lowe in a department store and was impressed by her outfit, and quickly hired her to be a dressmaker for her daughters. Lowe asked her husband to move to Florida so she could work for Lee, however he wanted her to stay a housewife. She decided to move to Florida anyway without her husband, taking her son with her to pursue her dreams of dress making.
Josephine encouraged Ann to apply for fashion school and Ann got accepted to ST Taylor School of Design, NYC in 1917. She faced racism for her skin color by the school's directors, and she was segregated to a separate classroom because her classmates refused to study with a black woman. Racial segregation in the United States during World War One and beyond, was widely upheld due to the implementation of Jim Crow laws.
Ann was already extremely talented and more advanced than her classmates however, and so she completed her school in half the time it was supposed to take. She worked in New York. According to records, she had tried to establish a dress shop there but was unsuccessful at first. Anne moved back to Tampa, Florida, and opened her own dressmaking shop, specializing in ball gowns, and formal attire. In the roaring 1920s, she designed clothing for social events and parties for elite women, like the Gasparilla balls in Tampa.
Once again, she left Tampa to move back to New York City to pursue her dream of opening a dress shop in the city. She had $20,000 which is almost $400,000 in today's money. This came from savings, the Lee family, and a loan from Alpha Phi Alpha which was an African American fraternity. She closed her shop in Tampa Florida in 1928 and moved to New York. In New York she had 4 shops throughout her life. Her locations at Madison Avenue made Lowe the first African American ever to have a shop on that retail strip. During the Great Depression, Lowe lost many of her funds and during this time she worked for other fashion houses like Hattie Carnegie and Chez Sonia. She made a lot of elite social connections throughout her life whether in Tampa or in New York City.
Oliva de Havilland, an actress who won the academy award for her movie, was wearing Ann Lowe's dress, and she received high praise for it. Lowe was a fashion reporter in Paris throughout the 1940s and 50s for the New York Age which was an African American newspaper. In 1953 she designed the bridal gown and bridal party dresses for the 1953 wedding of Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy. She also designed for other festivals, coronations, and pageants. Throughout her career, Lowe created one-of-a-kind dresses for very powerful and wealthy clients, however, many of her clients underpaid her for the costs of the labor and material. She was less publicly praised for her work at the time as well.
Ann Lowe is remembered as a brilliant couture designer who paved the way for Black designers in the fashion industry. She faced many obstacles in her life such as discrimination on the merit of race and sex, financial challenges, and much more, however despite all of this, she created a lasting legacy through her art and contributions to the fashion world.
Citations for Ann Lowe
“Ann Lowe: American Couturier.” Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, 7 Apr. 2021, https://www.winterthur.org/ann-lowe-american-couturier/.
Nichols, Elaine. “Ann Lowe.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/ann-lowe. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.
The last designer of today’s letter is Pauline Trigère. She was born in 1908 in Paris. Her parents were Jewish-Russian immigrants, and her dad owned a tailoring shop where Pauline designed her first dress at just 14 years old, although she originally wanted to be a surgeon. She learned to cut patterns at her father’s shop and was an apprentice while she attended college at Victor Hugo in Paris. Due to the rise of Nazi Germany prior to World War II, in 1937, Pauline and her family left Paris for Chile, however their ship stopped in New York on the way, and Paulilne decided to stay in the city when she saw how vibrant the city was with fashion.
Trigère, her husband at the time, and her brother joined one and other to open a shop but had to close it in 1941. She worked as an assistant designer at Hattie Carnegie but was laid off when Carnegie closed soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Her husband left her with her kids because he felt as if he was in competition with her. She and her brother started another business the following year. Her first collection was advertised by her brother, who travelled across America by bus to show off his sister’s designs to the country. During World War II, European and American fashion idea exchange was interrupted, however Pauline’s designs blended both European and American fashion.
Her technique was draping her fabric on a mannequin and cutting directory on the model rather than sketching. Trigère also developed thin wool fabric called Trigeen. Moreover, she had a signature turtle pin which she viewed as her lucky charm. Later, she would have a signature fragrance featuring her gold turtle.
Pauline’s work won many awards: In 1949, for instance, she won her first of three Coty Awards for design excellence, was later added into the Fashion Hall of Fame. In 1961, she designed the film Breakfast at Tiffany.
In 1961 Pauline became one of the first major designers to hire a black model, Beverly Valdes. This was during the civil rights movement. She even ordered one of her customers out of her store who did not support her hiring black models. She lost thousands of dollars worth of deals from stores cancelling her orders for her support, but she did not care and said she won't miss them. She also advocated for women's autonomy and social equality. She joined Betty Friedan who was a leading figure that sparked the second wave of feminism in the usa and they cofounded the First Women's Bank in Manhattan. She wanted women's fashion to be practical and helped introduce jumpsuits, and made sure her designs had lots of pockets, even the ballgowns.
Pauline Trigère is remembered as a fashion designer who built a multimillion dollar brand on her own, as well as a fierce advocate for equal rights for all people regardless of gender and skin color. She was fearless when it came to her support for marginalized groups at a time when it was not socially acceptable to do so. She changed both fashion, and helped shape a more accepting world.
Citations for Pauline Trigère
“Pauline Trigere.” CFDA, 21 Sept. 2016, https://cfda.com/member/pauline-trigere/.
“Trigere, Pauline.” Vintage Fashion Guild, https://vintagefashionguild.org/resources/item/label/trigere-pauline/. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.
Thank you so much for reading the first letter of It’s a Woman’s World! I hope you learned something new and inspiring. Tune in next Sunday, when we will be in Mexico, learning about fabulous designers from this vibrant country. Follow me @zaraxshanzay on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, to see my newest videos and projects.
Until next time!
Xoxo, Zara Shanzay
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