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NOSE DIVE ANNIE Clothes designer, pilot, Olympic skier STORY / Nancy Wolfe Stead
Glamorous “Nose Dive Annie,” as she was known in her heyday in Stowe, arrived on the arm of James Negley Cooke in the 1930s to beguile all with her skill on skis, on the tennis court, and in the air— she was one of the first licensed female pilots and began her flying career at age 12—as a clothes designer, and après ski hostess extraordinaire. While Ann Cooke left Stowe for Colorado in 1947, she’s part of Slope Style: Fashion on Snow 1930 – 2014, one of the exhibits at the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum on Stowe’s Main Street. Cookie, as her husband was known, was a colleague of New York City securities specialist Roland Palmedo, who put Stowe on the map as a ski resort and peopled it with the social elite of New York. As investor in and vice president of the new Mt. Mansfield Lift Company, Cookie and Ann moved to Stowe. Fellow New York City go-getter and founder of the U.S. Ski Patrol Charles Minot (Minnie) Dole gave Ann her nickname when she won a major Eastern Championship race, and an alternate position on the 1939 Olympic team, on what was, at the time, one of the most famous ski trails in North America, Stowe’s Nose Dive. With the outbreak of World War II and the de-camping of Cookie with an Olympic team colleague, Ann left to serve as civilian flight instructor to Army and Navy cadets. Ever a stylish woman—she dressed with flair on and off the slopes—she returned to Stowe and established a career in fashion design, where she opened a shop and designed and fabricated ski clothing. Local women knitted sweaters of her designs and her fashions made the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, as well as the windows of Fifth Avenue’s elite stores. Among Ann’s other accomplishments: She competed at Wimbledon, became an expert in dressage, hunting, and jumping, and worked as a model. According to her obituary, Ann was “captured in photographs by artists such as Edward Steichen, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and Toni
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FASHIONISTA An advertisement for Ann Cooke’s clothing shop in Stowe. (Photo courtesy of New England Ski Museum) From the March 1, 1941 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. (Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum) A modeling shoot by photographer Toni Frissell.
Frissell, and was regularly featured in publications such as Vogue, Town and Country … from the 1930s through the 1970s.” Her couture clothing collection was donated to the Phoenix Art Museum just before her death, and features “some of the most masterful fashion designers of the 1950s and 1960s, including Charles James, Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Madame Grès.” Ann Bonfoey Taylor (1910-2007)—she married Vernon “Moose” Taylor in 1947—was inducted into the Colorado Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2009. Ann and Vernon were early founders of Vail, and they built a chalet that became the social hub of the new resort. Stowe’s Betty McGill and Dawn Hazelett remember delightful visits and the extraordinary memory of Ann’s home with its long entrance hall lined with coat hooks, each bearing one of Ann’s fur jackets. Dawn marvels: “Few people could keep up with Annie.” n