Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe

(Hardback)

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Description

A careful snip, a delicate fold. Fabric the colour of new petals. Skirts that flare like upside-down blossoms. A garden bursts into bloom! There is no 'good enough'. For Ann, only the best will do.

Award-winning author Kate Messner, costume historian Margaret E. Powell, and fashion designer and illustrator Erin Robinson tell the powerful story of the ground-breaking Ann Lowe, who grew up in a small Alabama dress shop and became the first nationally known African American fashion designer. Sought after by millionaires and movie stars, her designs walked the red carpet and graced the wedding of Senator John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier. At a time when the world around her thought African Americans deserved no more than second-class treatment, Ann expects no less of herself, and no less FOR herself, than the BEST.

Reviews

"This picture book biography is as elegant as its subject-African American fashion designer Ann Lowe....Using repetition and lyrical language, the authors emphasize her determination....artist Robinson creates dimension, texture, and movement with her collage illustrations. The textiles float and flow; depictions of Lowe's creations are as lush and effervescent as the real garments.... A stylish biography worthy of inclusion on all shelves."

- School Library Journal, starred review

- "Robinson's digital art, full of textures, curves, and color, is perfectly suited to the subject, while Messner and Powell's evocative, often alliterative text begs to be read aloud....A deserving tribute to a designer who wanted only the best." - Kirkus, starred review
"Messner and Powell offer a persevering portrait of fashion designer Ann Lowe...Figural renderings by Robinson accompany, foregrounding dreamy ribbons and textile-textured layers that emulate the movement of fabric." - Publisher's Weekly

Author Bio

Kate Messner is the New York Times bestselling author of morethan fifty books for young readers. She's passionately curiousand writes books for kids who wonder, too. Her titles include award-winning picture books, easy readers, chapter books,novels, and nonfiction. Kate lives on Lake Champlain with herfamily and is trying to summit all 46 Adirondack High Peaks inbetween book deadlines.

Margaret E. Powell was a decorative arts historian and acuratorial assistant at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art. Before that, she served as a costume historian and researcher
at the Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware. She wroteher master's thesis on Ann Lowe and the hidden history offashion and was instrumental in bringing long overdue attentionto Lowe's work. Margaret was organising a major exhibitionabout Ann Lowe's life and fashion before she passed away in 2019.

Erin Robinson is an Emmy-Award-nominated artist and afashion designer. She studied at Parsons School of Design andthe Corcoran School of Art. As a fashion designer, she's worked for Gap, OshKosh, Sears, and The Children's Place. As an artist,her work has appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice, Essence, and the Washington Post. She works in a variety of media,including watercolour, acrylic, ink, charcoal, collage, and digital, and currently divides her time between Washington, D.C.,and New York.