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The polished designs of Lela Rose

This gown exemplifies Lela Rose’s gifts for sculptural shapes, rich fabrics and bright palettes. Courtesy Lela Rose.

Lela Rose once said that she was dedicated to the idea that you should always be dressed, and with her designs you always are. 

Think Renée Zellweger on the red carpet for the Sydney, Australia, premiere of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” in a strapless, peony-pink column dress with a singular, folded bodice from Rose’s Pre-Fall 2025 Collection. Or Elizabeth Hurley in a long-sleeve, off-the-shoulder midi dress in Barbie pink with buttons down the front. (Other celebrity admirers have included Jessica Alba, Selma Blair, Jessica Chastain, Claire Danes, Laura Dern, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, January Jones, Karolina Kurkova, Olivia Munn, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zoe Saldana, Uma Thurman, Olivia Munn, Chrissy Teigen, Sofia Vergara, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and former First Lady Michelle Obama.)

Or consider the strapless gown seen here with its slightly bell-shaped skirt, an evocation of the late 19th-century’s Gilded Age, and an oh-so-modern palette of electric blue on black. Whether her color schemes are boldly jeweled or flirtatiously pastel, Rose’s eye for the sculptural always delivers a flattering silhouette, including distinctive bodices and necklines that draw the eye upward. 

Rose honed that eye in her native Dallas, Texas, and at the University of Colorado where she graduated in 1991 with a degree in painting and sculpture before going on to the Parson’s School of Design in New York City, now her headquarters. She worked with designers Richard Tylor and Christian Francis Roth before debuting her Lela Rose Collection in 1998 and gaining attention by designing Barbara and Laura Bush’s outfits for their father George W. Bush’s 2001 presidential inauguration. The debut collection was followed by Lela Rose Bridal in the fall of 2006 and, 12 years later, Pearl by Lela Rose, a more casual ready-to-wear line. 

Today, Rose’s work also embraces clutches and jewelry to complete your ensembles as well as tablescapes, because, well, your entertaining should be as well-dressed as you are. It’s not surprising, then, that she would name her 2015 home entertainment book “Pret-a-Party” or that this Westerner — who lives in Jackson Hole Wyoming, and has a ranch in Texas, as well as a home in the Catskills — would follow up with 2023’s “Fresh Air Affair: Entertaining With Style in the Great Outdoors.” It dovetails beautifully with her Lela Rose Ranch Collection, with its hand-embellished seed beading, chambray and poplin fabrics and prints like her Rey Rosa “Western Toile.”

In a 2023 interview with Veranda magazine, Rose credited her mother for her love of entertaining with flair: “She was always in the kitchen cooking and dreaming up something spectacular,” Rose says. “For my birthday parties growing up, she would wrap up little trinkets and put them insidethe cake batter, so when you were served a slice, you’d find a little surprise. It was so magical and unexpected that I’ve passed this down to my own children – for any occasion there’s a cake.”

Whether it’s fashion or home design, for Rose the divine is always in the details.

Tags: Lela Rose, Jessica Alba, Selma Blair, Jessica Chastain, Claire Danes, Laura Dern, Selena Gomez,  Anne Hathaway, January Jones, Karolina Kurkova, Olivia Munn, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zoe Saldana, Uma Thurman, Olivia Munn, Chrissy Teigen, Sofia Vergara, Catherine, Princess of Wales and former First Lady Michelle Obama, Lela Rose Ranch, Pearl by Lela Rose, Leila Rose Collection, New York City, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Catskills, Dallas, Texas, Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, George W. Bush, Renee Zellweger, Elizabeth Hurley,

Still queen of style

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All eyes are on Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy as she stuns in this shimmering pink Oleg Cassini at a 1962 White House dinner with the French minister of culture, André Malraux (left) and her husband, President John F. Kennedy (right). Courtesy the White House.

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.