Sheaths and shifts. Ropes of pearls. Pillbox hats atop a brunet bouffant. Large, dark glasses and and long, white gloves.
Such was the power of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’ wardrobe that the mere mention of a few articles of clothing or accessories is enough to conjure a woman who transformed American culture in part by transforming American fashion. Indeed, the book cover for Steven Rowley’s new novel, “The Editor,” features only the famed oversize sunglasses on a desk with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop while the bubblegum pink cover of Eve Pollard’s novel “Jack’s Widow” depicts the bouffant hairdo, a strand of pearls and white gloves. The mind fills in the rest.
This is a big year for Jackie and her admirers. July 28 marks the 90th anniversary of her birth. (The 25th anniversary of her death was commemorated May 19.) This year is also the 20th anniversary of the death of her son, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, the former Greenwich resident Carolyn Bessette; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard July 16.
“Age cannot wither her,” Shakespeare wrote of his Cleopatra, “nor custom stale her infinite variety.” The same could be said of Jackie, who continues to influence the influencers. Long before Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge wowed the Canadians with a red outfit that paid tribute to the scarlet of their flag and the Royal Mounties, Jackie donned a nubby red suit with a high collar, three-quarter sleeves and a matching pillbox hat for a 1961 visit that electrified Ottawa. The Jackie effect – the subject of a commemorative issue by People magazine – can be seen in Kate’s double-breasted coats and matching hats; her sister-in-law Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s white cape dress; first lady Melania Trump’s wide-belted outfits; Amal Clooney’s black T and white jeans; and Jennifer Lopez’s and Gwyneth Paltrow’s goddess gowns.
But few today remember that Jackie wasn’t always a style icon. A bookish equestrian whose introverted nature gave her a certain mystique as it shielded her from a prying public, a controlling mother, Janet Lee Auchincloss, and the Bouviers’ lack of wealth relative to her Auchincloss’ step-family, the coltish young Jackie was more apt to adapt the gamin look of a 1950s Audrey Hepburn than develop one of her own. It was her younger sister Lee, considered the more traditional beauty, who was the fashion and design trendsetter as well as a lover of the ancient Greeks (and one ancient Greek in particular, Aristotle Onassis) and the Italian Renaissance.
But if Lee was the more adventurous sister, Jackie had more stick-to-itiveness. With Oleg Cassini, the Paris-born couture and film costume designer, curating a wardrobe designed to read across the world stage, Kenneth devising a longer, bouffant hairdo to frame her wide-set bone structure and Halston creating pillbox hats that would just crown her large head, Jackie picked up the ball and ran with it. In both fashion and interior design, she indulged the love of France that was inspired both by her Bouvier blood and her junior year in Paris – “the happiest of my life,” she later recalled. It enabled her to mix French couture (Balenciaga, Dior, Givenchy) with domestic ensembles and to bring the White House into the present by looking to its refined Federal (early 19th century) past, which corresponded to the neoclassical period in France.
But interior design and fashion were always means to an end for Jackie, who saw them in service of creating a standard of excellence for the nation and an atmosphere of comfort for her husband, President John F. Kennedy, and their children, her number one priority.
With her children grown, she focused on historic preservation, championing Grand Central Terminal, and, as an editor encouraging a host of memoirists from Michael Jackson to Martha Graham.
Jackie remains the queen of style in part because she was always about so much more than that.