In a time when high and low were defined and demarcated, designer Oleg Cassini created the White House look of Jacqueline Kennedy, and so many women wanted a copy, which made the First Lady want to divest herself of the style. It was good to be admired but not emulated. Cassini, cast aside, brought the look to the masses, giving the aspirational class of flight and desk attendants the touch of class it desired. From the Guardian:

“Cassini left Hollywood as the studios contracted in the early 1950s, and opened his own French and Italian inspired ready-to-wear business in New York. His brother had named the teenage Jacqueline Bouvier, Queen Deb of 1947. Cassini first met her in the El Morocco nightclub, five years before her marriage to Kennedy: he recalled her fit muscle tone, especially her upper arms in sleeveless gowns.

Joe Kennedy approached Cassini because he knew the designer would be discreet. As writer Pamela Clarke Keogh noted, Cassini not only dined chez Kennedy, he taught Jackie the twist, discussed the Kamasutra with Jack and once persuaded Jack to allow Jackie to wear a one-shouldered gown on a state occasion by comparing her with ancient Egyptian royalty. But Joe could never have guessed that the Cassini interpretation of Givenchy’s silhouette with exaggerated details – buttons and pockets in scale with the salons of diplomacy – would be the first American look to be popular worldwide. When the garments were displayed decades later, critics thought it an armoured style, for all its camera-catching colours. The clothes were there to protect her vulnerability.

Cassini’s greatest success was Jackie’s dress for the inauguration gala in 1961: she had ordered a complicated outfit from Bergdorf Goodman, and also a plain gown of heavy satin from Cassini. “Now I know how poor Jack feels when he has told three people they can’t be secretary of state,” she wrote to Cassini. She chose to wear his creation for the gala and kept a photograph of herself in it, leaving her old home in the snow, in her White House dressing-room. Jack told her to sit forward in her car seat, and his driver to switch on the lights, so people could see her in that dress: the young, hopeful bride of the nation.

Cassini was not responsible for the pink suit she was wearing in Dallas, in 1963, when Jack Kennedy was assassinated: that was a Chanel copy. After the president’s funeral, Jackie dropped Cassini, understanding instinctively that his work had become demode. For the rest of the 20th century, the Jackie style was visible chiefly in the uniforms of air hostesses and hotel receptionists.”