The Apricot Coat Formula
During an official trip to India in 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy wore an Oleg Cassini dress and coat of apricot silk for a daytime boat ride on Lake Pichola. “This ensemble brilliantly served Mrs. Kennedy’s needs: The fabric was rigid enough to keep its composure in the heat of India, and its dazzling color and sheen were calculated to ensure that she would be instantly identifiable to the crowds on the distant shore,” writes Hamish Bowles in the catalog for the new, highly anticipated “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years” exhibition, which he curated.
With great clarity, the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute here reveals that, even at 31, when she became first lady, she was a masterful manipulator of her own image. “Jackie knew how, in the most subtle way, to use style and fashion to represent her husband’s administration on the world stage. And she knew how potent clothing can be,” says the 37-year-old guest curator during an interview. He is on leave from his position as European editor-at-large for American Vogue.
She didn’t work alone. She assembled a first-rate cadre of experts from all fronts--fashion designers, decorators, historians, horticulturists, chefs--to create the image and the reality of the Kennedy White House. “She had an ability to collaborate with the best possible people, but she never relinquished control over the situation,” says Bowles, whose lifelong fascination with fashion history--he owns roomfuls of 20th century couture--equipped him to piece together the puzzle that was Jackie.
Two generations after the Kennedy White House, there is some disagreement about who actually originated Jackie’s style. Oleg Cassini, 88, who still maintains an office in New York, produced more than 300 outfits during the thousand days of the Kennedy administration and has been credited by some as the creator of the “Jackie look.” The designer strongly disagrees with Bowles’ contention that Jackie played a major role in designing her own clothes.
But Bowles, in the exhibit’s 208-page catalog, consistently illustrates how the first lady used French couture and her own sense of style to model her individualistic wardrobe. Bowles says, “The biggest revelation for me was the level of control Jackie had . . . She was very hands-on and specific and fastidious about the details.”
Her former social secretary, Letitia Baldridge, 75, who lives in Washington, D.C., says it most concisely. “She knew how things should look.” The exhibition, which previews to the press today with a rare public appearance by her daughter, Carolyn Kennedy Schlossberg, supports this.
The Collection Fills 10 Rooms
The 80-piece collection, borrowed from the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, includes such items as Jackie’s detailed personal notes and hand-painted dressing-room doors. The 10 rooms that the collection fills take the visitor through the 1960 presidential campaign, the Kennedy inauguration, the White House days and the first lady’s travels. Bowles recalls that when he opened the first box of Kennedy’s clothes, he was dazzled by her brilliant colors.
To heighten the effect of her use of color, he uses his own bold strokes throughout the exhibit. One wall is electric blue, another the color of paprika and still another is ruby. “So much received information was in black-and-white images, news images and photographs,” says Bowles. “There wasn’t a sense of how carefully she thought about using color as a statement. I wanted to capture that Dorothy-ending-up-in-Oz feeling. She was absolutely thinking about being a pin dot of color wherever she went.” The apricot outfit she wore on the Indian trip served that purpose.
At a White House dinner honoring President and Mrs. Harry S. Truman, Jackie shunned color--choosing an almost severe Cassini gown in ivory duchesse silk--to create a contrast between the old guard and modernity. The effect in a 1961 photo is startling and, says Bowles, was carefully calculated. “She was very much the physical embodiment of what her husband’s presidency was about--internationalism and a celebration of art and literature and culture.”
Her affect and its effect were profound. “Jackie’s style was upper-class East Coast style,” says Valerie Steele, acting director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “Back in 1960, most Americans had ‘Mamie Eisenhower style,’ and they weren’t aware of what upper-class people were wearing. She [Kennedy] was the popularizer of the European, minimalist look, and it hit us like a thunderbolt.”
Bowles, too, recognizes the impact. “Her phenomenon was the extent and breadth of influence she had on contemporary girls,” he says. “I can only compare it to someone like Britney Spears today, but girls then were wearing abstractions of Paris couture.”
Kennedy’s tastes ran to the streamlined. “I only like terribly simple clothes,” she noted in a 1960 letter to Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of Vogue. Sleeveless dresses with slight overblouses that skimmed the body but did not cling. Neat, short suit jackets with three-quarter sleeves. Gowns with Grecian overtones that were daringly one-shouldered, strapless or brilliantly colored. She hated hats but wore them because they were required of a politician’s wife.
Her famous pillbox was designed by Halston for Bergdorf Goodman in New York and became an instant fashion rage. “It’s interesting,” says Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editor in chief, “how uniform her style was, yet incredibly personal. It didn’t deviate. There’s always a sense of the same person. No fashion mistakes or eccentricities.”
What Steele finds amazing about the exhibit, she says, is “how Hamish really ferreted out and documented how she created her own image. She was quite cognizant of her role as first lady and projected a modern, dynamic look, which was the stylistic component of what she perceived as John Kennedy’s impact.”
Seeking a U.S. Designer
When it came down to fashion, Kennedy preferred beautifully made French pieces from houses such as Givenchy and Chanel but came under fire from Democratic strongholds like the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Pressure to wear American-made clothing led her to Cassini, who tempered his Hollywood glam--he designed for Joan Crawford, Joan Fontaine and Janet Leigh among others--for this special client.
“I had to readjust my concept to fit the image of the first lady. I put a little water in my wine,” he told Women’s Wear Daily in 1964. According to Bowles’ research, Kennedy asked Cassini to copy French designers. One dress in the exhibit is a line-for-line adaptation of a Givenchy dress she owned. The original, in embossed black silk organza, was interpreted by Cassini in yellow silk crepe for a diplomatic reception. A Cassini gown in pale green silk chiffon, embroidered with sequins and rhinestones was, says Bowles, an adaptation of a spring-summer design from Marc Bohan for Christian Dior. This she wore to a dinner hosted by President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast in Washington, D.C.
While Kennedy’s notes to Cassini and corroborative photography are strong evidence, Cassini is furious about Bowles’ claim that Kennedy directed him to imitate. “This man,” he says, referring to Bowles, “pretends that Jackie was a designer. Granted, she had very good taste, but she surrounded herself with able people. But she had no pretense of being a well-dressed person. She begged me to hurry up and make her clothes so she could go out. His [Bowles’] agenda is very clear to me. He wants to restore the idea that the Europeans are the only ones who can design.”
Bowles demurs. “I think [Cassini] has been given a great deal of credit. He’s a significant part of the story that’s been acknowledged in the catalog and the exhibition.”
This seems to be true. Cassini is credited with some 25 ensembles in the exhibit, most of them very beautiful, and all of them capturing the essence of Jackie. A display of colorful frocks that Cassini made for Jackie’s visit to Mexico in 1962 takes up an entire wall. The luscious colors of green, yellow and hot pink matched the confetti of the ticker-tape parade in the first lady’s honor, Bowles points out.
It is Jackie, however, who gets credit for her Inaugural Ball gown and cape with an assist from in-house designers at Bergdorf Goodman. According to the catalog, Kennedy based it on an image by Dior that she said, “I tore out of some English magazine.”
An Arbiter of Fashion
Bowles asserts that Kennedy’s impact is virtually unrivaled. “Princess Diana understood the power of clothing,” he says. “But in terms of having that synthesis in absorbing style but also celebrating culture and the arts as Jackie did, one has to go back to 18th century France and Madame Pompadour, who fascinated Jackie.” The influential mistress of Louis XV of France promoted the arts and reigned at the court as an arbiter of fashion.
Cassini agrees. “She [Jackie] stands because she was a woman of mystery, and as a couple they were handsome, rich, healthy, well-educated, and they had ideas. You can never reproduce the 1,000 days of magic again. She was a spectacular, created comet.”
Steele says the times will prevent the rise of another such woman. “You couldn’t have someone like Jackie today. We have iconic figures like . . . Madonna, but they tend to come from the world of popular culture, not a conspicuous political role. You wouldn’t have the public that was so able to be swept off their feet. Everyone today is swamped with the visuals of fashion. I really think she’s the only one of her kind.”
One wonders if the intensely private Jacqueline Kennedy would have approved of this exhibit. Bowles alludes to the possibility that she may have planned it in a way, with the carefully filed notes and clothing she left. But he is respectfully noncommittal. “I don’t think I could presume to say. But I would hope that she would be happy that her style in every area was being celebrated beyond clothes.”
