Science and fashion do not seem like they would pair well together. However, when the scientist is Rosalind Franklin and the fashionista Ann Lowe, they actually do. Franklin was a woman during a time when girls wore pretty dresses, learned to sew and have families and did not go around discovering DNA. And Lowe was a woman who would work with her family making gowns for grand balls and after her mothers death, would make one of the most famous wedding gowns; one fit for a Princess of Camelot and her Senator Prince. And yet, they would have to fight for recognition, sometimes never getting it.
Franklin would keep looking deeper and deeper into things. She would not stop until she found the answer. And Lisa Gerin shows us this in Rosalind Looked Closer: An Unsung Hero of Molecular Science. Her work would be cut short due to cancer, but because of her studies on DNA and later RNA (and other areas) she would lay the groundwork for other scientists to win Nobel prizes and help scientists in 2019 create the vaccine for Covid. Chiara Fedele’s illustrations are detailed, clever, not overwhelmingly colorful, but do keep things moving by catching your eye. There are more earthy tones than other colors, but there are bright moments, too.
And then we have fashion with Ann Lowe. She was the best and she would work only for the best. Such as a young Masschusets senator and his blushing bride. A wedding that would almost not happen because when she went to deliver the dresses, the butler told her to “use the back door,” to which she answered with a threat to leave without delivering. But it was not all such glorious times. As a young black girl from Alabama in the 1910’s she would face racism, the death of her beloved mother and trying to save money for multiple shops from Florida to New York. Her life is told lyrically by Kate Messner and Margaret E. Powell in Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe. This tone matches the style of her creations. I would not call them dresses, or even gowns, they were works of art. Pieces that when she worked for others, never had her name on them. Ein Robinson created images that are filled with floating colors, imagery and the details evoke romantic elements.
While both books are currently available, I did read them via online reader copies, which with the case of Ann Low had a small goof in it that I want to double check with the final version.