Cassini became famous for Kennedy’s wardrobe

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, March 18, 2006

NEW YORK – The magic of Camelot may have had something to do with Oleg Cassini, the designer who created Jacqueline Kennedy’s graceful, elegant look.

Cassini died Friday at age 92 in a Long Island hospital, said his wife, Marianne.

“He was a tremendous, tremendous person,” she said.

Cassini created Jackie Kennedy’s Inauguration Day outfit, a fawn-colored wool coat with a sable collar over a matching wool dress, with a pillbox hat from Halston. Try though they might, the work of imitators never quite compared.

“The other ladies wore fur coats, and they looked like bears,” he recalled years later.

Cassini once said that shortly after John Kennedy was elected, he persuaded the first lady that she should hire him as the creator of her total look, rather than as one of many designers.

The result: Jacqueline Kennedy, only 31 when her husband was elected president, became the pinnacle of style during the White House years from 1961 to 1963.

“We are on the threshold of a new American elegance thanks to Mrs. Kennedy’s beauty, naturalness, understatement, exposure and symbolism,” Cassini said when his selection was announced.

In his 1995 book, “A Thousand Days of Magic, Dressing Jacqueline Kennedy for the White House,” Cassini recalled a constant sense of urgency during the White House years.

“All I remember about those days are nerves, and Jackie on the phone: ‘Hurry, hurry, Oleg, I’ve got nothing to wear,’” he wrote.