Cassini Gets His Smell of Success
Oleg Cassini seemed to have it all: a designer with a glorious past (married to Gene Tierney, once engaged to Grace Kelly, designer to Jacqueline Kennedy during her White House years) and a ubiquitous presence (his name is on everything from evening gowns to socks). But something was missing.
He didn’t have a fragrance to call his own. As far as he is concerned, “a designer without a fragrance is like a knight without a horse.” (A discontinued scent bearing Cassini’s name was introduced in 1979 and produced by Beecham Cosmetics, according to the Fragrance Foundation.)
Sitting in a patio chair at the Hotel Bel-Air, the lithe, silver-maned designer says he obtained all natural ingredients--such as jasmine, chrysanthemum, carnation, amber and Bulgarian Rose--and the crystal for the bottles from two French firms. To blind-test his composition, he turned to 3,000 women in the United States. Only after 75 improvements (one for each of his years, it turns out), was the designer ready to put his name, Cassini, on a fragrance that he calls “100% mine.”
Along with his memorable Jackie clothes, including the famous Inauguration Day beige pillbox hat and coat, Cassini claims a number of “firsts.” He was the first designer to put his name on licensed merchandise (for which he earned the title “Cassini the Greedy”) and the first to give men colored shirts--all of which is chronicled in his 1987 autobiography, “In My Own Fashion.”
Cassini says he also changed Grace Kelly’s appearance. “I created the ‘Grace Kelly look’ for her because she was so poorly dressed. Grace was trying to give the impression she was a serious actress. She was purposely dressing badly.”
As for Tierney: “She was of the school that everyone could be a designer. She designed her own clothes and that was a disaster.” After Cassini took charge, both women “won awards as best dressed,” he says. (Tierney first appeared on Eleanor Lambert’s International Best Dressed List in 1951, Kelly in 1955, just about the time each severed her personal relationship with the designer.)
Cassini continues to “design in Italy and America,” but primarily he oversees an enormous franchise fashion empire. He calculates that in the United States alone, retail sales of his men’s and women’s clothing, all made under licensee agreements, are $400 million.
Of all his past and present glories Cassini regards one with special fondness. “The best period for me as a creative person was with Jackie.
Out of about 300 garments he designed for her, “the greatest departure from tradition were the beige coat and little pillbox. Everyone else was in furs and looked like big bears. She looked so fresh, so pretty.”
While Cassini didn’t have to convince Jackie this was the right choice for the occasion, he remembers having to convince President Kennedy a few times. A case in point was a black velvet gown, with one bare shoulder, which Cassini defended by telling the President: Jackie’s shoulders were so lovely “she should expose not only one but both.”
If all goes as planned, Cassini’s “soft power” fragrance, which he introduced to admiring fans earlier this week in Nordstrom’s Westside Pavilion store, will grace the shoulders of women in 17 countries. Prices range from $35 for a 1.7-ounce eau de parfum to $195 for a one-ounce bottle of perfume.
