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

An inspiring picture book biography about the amazing Ann Lowe—the first nationally-known African American fashion designer.

A careful snip, a delicate fold.
Fabric the color 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 expected no less than very best for herself.

Kate Messner is the New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty books for young readers. She's passionately curious and 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 her family and is trying to summit all 46 Adirondack High Peaks in between book deadlines.

Margaret E. Powell was a decorative arts historian and a curatorial 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 wrote her master's thesis on Ann Lowe and the hidden history of fashion and was instrumental in bringing long overdue attention to Lowe's work. Margaret was organizing a major exhibition about Ann Lowe's life and fashion before she passed away in 2019.

Erin Robinson is an Emmy-Award-nominated artist and a fashion designer. She studied at Parsons School of Design and the 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 watercolor, acrylic, ink, charcoal, collage, and digital, and currently divides her time between Washington, D.C., and New York.