Tell Me EVERYTHING

Give us a great woman’s stories, and we'll show you the world.

- BY STELLENE VOLANDES

Dede Buchanan came down from Connecticut College to get her deb ball dress made at the Adam Room at Saks Fifth Avenue.

The place was run by Ann Lowe, the designer of Jackie Kennedy's wedding gown. “The people who worked in the Adam Room became your best friends,” the now Dede Buchanan Wilsey says from San Francisco. She was, to be fair, a very good customer. She debuted three times: in Dallas, in New York, and then at her own ball in Washington, DC, where she grew up. (Her father, diplomat and ambassador Wiley T. Buchanan Jr., was the White House chief of protocol during the Eisenhower administration.)