Jackie Kennedy was at least as influential for her fashions as for anything else. Which raises the question of that pink suit she wore on that fateful day. Following the assassination, did that suit sell like hotcakes, or was it something women avoided? I’m thinking it would have been seen as bad taste back then. But today, not only would women wear it, but they’d paint blood and brains stains on it.
But what’s the real scoop from 1963?
Well, the local paper said this yesterday:
The suit was made from Chanel material in a New York dress shop called Chez Ninon. It is kept at the National Archives and Records Administration Building in College Park, Md in an acid-free container In a windowless room where the air in changed six times an hour and kept between 65 and 68 degrees with 40% humidity. It has never been cleaned, and is folded exactly as it was when Jackie took it off. By agreement with Caroline Kennedy in 2003, it will not be publicly shown until at least 2063.
The last person known to have seen the matching hat was Jackie’s personal secretary, Mary Gallagher, “who has declined to discuss its whereabouts”.
None of that really answers your question, so I’ll speculate.
I think it would have been seen as crass, gauche, or insensitive to wear a dress intentionally similar to that one. I think the dress was probably one-of-a-kind, and not copied because of its place in history.
I suspect the event hurt sales of dresses that looked a little like that dress.
I hope you are wrong about how people would react today. Sure, somebody would be enough of an ass to wear a copy dress in public, but not many, and lots of people would know it is wrong.
Except as a Halloween costume. Jokes in bad taste are fair game for Halloween.
It wasn’t even a new suit. Jackie had been photographed in it before, as long astwo years earlier. The general style had actually been around since the mid-1950s.
Before the assassination there were various knockoffsaround.
Thread title edited to indicate subject.
It didn’t stop Marjorie Bouvier Simpson.
Or Dr. Girlfriend.
