Like a giddy schoolgirl, Amy Wilkinson is counting the days till she can gaze up at that iconic red ensemble.
Jacqueline Kennedy’s, that is.
Christmas will come almost two weeks early for Wilkinson–Dec. 12–when she and friends ascend the stairs to the Field Museum for “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years.” The museum sent her an exhibit alert about a year ago.
“I’ve had the postcard on my refrigerator since,” said Wilkinson, who works in program development for the University of Chicago Children’s Hospital.
At 28 and deluged by Britney Spears during early adulthood, Wilkinson wouldn’t seem to fit the wacky-for-Jackie profile.
But on the exhibit’s final stop–as tweed and brooches fill Gap stores and social conservatism bubbles across the post-election land–Jackie Kennedy captivates a skin-weary generation perhaps more now than on any of its previous runs in New York, Boston, Washington or Paris.
“I’d be much happier if my 8-year-old niece was learning more about class and style from Jackie than Britney,” is how Wilkinson sums it up.
Wilkinson was more than a decade from birth when Kennedy, in a wool boucle dress made Valentine-vivid by magazine covers, led 56 million black-and-white viewers on a White House tour on Feb. 14, 1962.
But after writing a Kennedy paper in high school and reading a Jackie biography a couple of summers ago, Wilkinson was hooked.
“I got swept up in Kennedy madness,” she said. “She was kind of like Princess Diana.”
In some ways, Kennedy remains a perpetual peer and role model to young women.
Quickly making her mark
Kennedy was only 31 when her husband was elected–the second-youngest wife ever of an American president-elect. She spent less than three years as first lady, shaping a legacy before she retreated from the spotlight after her husband’s assassination Nov. 22, 1963.
“She was my age as first lady–this was something my friend and I were talking about,” said Julie Christopher, 32, who works in public relations in Chicago and viewed the exhibit on opening day. “Think of what she was dealing with. She was so gracious, so poised at such a young age. It’s something I aspire to.”
These first viewers’ first observations often centered not on Kennedy’s mode of dress, but on the Camelot-era equivalent of work/life balance.
Liz Smith, 27, a paralegal in Chicago, noted that Kennedy’s typed itineraries for state visits to Canada and Paris, contained in display cases, capitalized Free Time, putting it on par with appointments.
“She was very forward,” Smith said, “but at the same time in the moment.”
Near the end of the exhibit, video footage shows Jackie frolicking with children, horse and dog. Her voiceover enunciates that, though she takes her other roles very seriously, motherhood ranks first.
After seeing it, Joe Ferwerda, 21, a student at Concordia University in River Forest who attended on opening day with his parents and sister, said he was struck most by Kennedy’s sense of family.
“The way she stuck by her husband–it seems she was always by his side. You don’t see that much anymore,” he said.
Nevertheless, she achieved much in her own right, said Marisa Bryce, 35, an independent consultant for Qualcomm.
Kennedy won a Vogue writing award, worked as a photographer, spoke four languages (and interpreted for her husband with French President Charles de Gaulle), restored the White House and became a literary editor.
That’s why Bryce, who’s on the board of the Field Associates, asked to serve as co-chair of the exhibit event for the young professionals group a little more than a week ago.
“It’s well-documented how much of an asset she was to the Kennedy presidency, and couple it with the fact she’s only 31. . . . It’s different from being a celebrity where you can make a fashion faux pas here or an [offensive] statement there–it doesn’t affect how the world views your country! . . . I always like to find people who can inspire me to do more, and I think she’s one of those people.”
None of the early viewers who were interviewed dismissed the fashion as fluff.
“There could have been a peace offering because of that dress,” Liz Smith said, gesturing to the sequined shell-pink gown of Kennedy’s that melted–if not disarmed–Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a Vienna soiree.
(The Associated Press reported at the time that, at the sight of her, the characteristically bellicose Khrushchev behaved like “a smitten schoolboy.”)
At the behest of the “made-in-America” lobby, Kennedy had switched from French designers such as Givenchy to New York-based Oleg Cassini and an exclusive Park Avenue dressmaking house, Chez Ninon, for much of her official wardrobe.
Both took many cues from Paris for the overblouse dresses and boxy jackets she favored, which implied rather than defined the body beneath.
Their cling-free silhouettes were a curiosity but not necessarily a relic, even for some of the youngest exhibit viewers.
“It would be cool to try some of them on,” said Megan Downey, 14, of Schererville, Ind., who was touring the exhibit with friend Kara Kremer, 14, of Dyer, Ind. “It’s coming back in style,” Downey said.
Many visitors also delighted in learning of Kennedy’s rebellious streaks–one of the most misunderstood regarding hats.
Kennedy hated them.
Passive resistance
So she quietly revolted against the convention by tilting them farther back on her head than was customary, playing down their scale–and setting a trend, along with triple-strand pearls and a string of others that became classics.
“Jackie is more my grandmother’s age,” said Jill Larson, 22, of Chicago, who with her mother from Iowa was first in line on opening day of the exhibit. “But I put my sunglasses on this morning and my mom said, `Oh, those are so Jackie.’ It’s her style–but also the way she wore the clothes, the confidence, the intelligence. Those are valuable things even for my generation.”
Through her youthful but sophisticated choices–both in fashion and in social affairs at the White House–Kennedy echoed her husband’s “New Frontier” message. “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans,” he had said in a speech.
The country itself had grown up.
“I couldn’t help but feel the time period now in relation to then,” said exhibition designer Teresa Murray, 38. “It was a positive time. She was very proud of Americans and felt we were on par with the Europeans, in style and in letters and arts.
“If nothing else it made me very proud to be an American,” Murray said. “And we should be. We have a great history and, hopefully, a great future.”
What to know when you go
Here are details on “Jackie Kennedy: The White House Years.”
The space: The exhibit’s space at the Field Museum is larger than at some of its previous sites. “This is about 10,000 square feet; Boston and Paris were closer to 5,000,” said exhibition designer Teresa Murray.
The display: The biggest difference from its previous stints is the enclosed cases. “Dust is damaging, so we enclosed the dresses and used that to our advantage,” Murray said. “It allows you to get very close and you can see backs and sides of dresses,” where the detail was often concentrated.
Interactivity: Another bonus, added after the opening day, is an interactive touch fabric exhibit, where visitors can touch modern replicas of the soft but structured fabrics Jacqueline Kennedy wore, such as Alaskine, silk gazar and wool boucle. “A lot are soft to the touch but held their form, which was a smart choice when she was standing and sitting often,” Murray said. “She didn’t want to look rumpled.”
Greatest hits: The White House and Washington section holds some of the most oohed-over gowns, including a Chez Ninon evening dress, modeled on a Nina Ricci one, with a black silk velvet bodice and Chinese yellow silk satin skirt. Nearby, an Oleg Cassini evening dress in black fortuny silk satin drew sighs.
Setup: It’s divided into sections: Campaign; Inauguration; Canada and Europe; her travels to India, Pakistan and Latin America; Greece, Miami, Palm Beach, Ravello; Dressing Room; White House Restoration; Red Room, the first to be restored; the White House and Washington; and Epilogue, which sums up her career as a literary editor and her support fo the artsafter John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, until her death May 19, 1994.
Congestion: Even in the first four hours of the sold-out opening day, crowds were bearable and non-hostile. But the rooms can grow warm and humid, so skip a coat, wear cushioned shoes as always, and avoid bulky bags that bump those around you. If you use the audio tour, as you enter each room you will need to remember to glance high on the multiple cases for your cue to advance to the next audio track. The special gift shop as you exit the exhibit gets very crowded. You can find some of the same merchandise in the museum’s larger main gift shop.
Tickets: At $25 for regular admission (a variety of discounts is available, including on Mondays and Tuesdays), the Field Museum is charging more for the exhibit, which runs through May 8, than at previous locations. Except for VIP tickets, admission is timed to prevent congestion and long lines. The audio tour is $5. Call 312-922-9410 or check fieldmuseum.org.
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TRUE OR FALSE
The young and the timeless
How relevant is Jacqueline Kennedy to a young generation today? You decide in this true-false quiz.
1. She once was pilloried for the Camelot-era version of a youthful indiscretion: revealing too much skin.
2. A Barbie doll collector, the first lady adored French designers because they accentuated a woman’s curves.
3. Never much of a woman’s woman, Jackie took obvious pleasure in hoarding the spotlight from other wives around the world.
4. Words like “cheesy” never would have crossed her patrician lips.
5. Beige? Black? Only for a funeral in Kennedy’s color-saturated book.
6. She turned a blind eye to the young and poor in the U.S. Rather, poverty in India became her cause celebre.
7. Bonus scuttlebutt! Why aren’t shoes on most of the mannequins in the exhibit?
Time to evaluate your Jackie savvy
Here are the answers to the Jackie Kennedy quiz on the Q cover.
1. True. To Good Friday mass in 1962 in Palm Beach, Fla., she wore a sleeveless sundress with head scarf and thong sandals from Jack Rogers (worn then and now by Palm Beach elegantes). One irate citizen called her a “beatnik.”
2. False. The Parisian couturiers she loved–Givenchy and Chanel–were leading the way from the Barbie silhouettes that had constrained women since World War II, when, not coincidentally, female designers such as Coco Chanel had dropped out temporarily. Kennedy rarely wore clothing that nipped the waist; her “overblouse” dresses fed a trend.
3. False. At a lunch with Nina Khrushchev in Vienna–White House social secretary Letitia Baldrige recalls in the audio tour at the exhibit–crowds outside were crying for “Jackie! Jackie!” Sensitive to her companion, Kennedy “bodily removed Nina from the sofa” and took her to the windows, too, holding her arm aloft. “The Austrians, being ever so polite, began shouting `Jackie! Nina! Jackie! Nina!'” Baldrige recounts. “It was a great diplomatic moment.”
4. False. In a letter entreating a longtime friend to lead the Commission of Fine Arts, she wrote with youthful urgency: “I don’t blame you for not wanting to be head–but if you aren’t head–you are useless–as people only listen to the head. . . . ” She went on to warn that without his help, “lovely buildings will be torn down and cheesy skyscrapers go up–Perhaps saving old buildings and having the new ones be right isn’t the most important thing in the world–if you are waiting for the bomb–but I think we are always going to be waiting for the bomb and it won’t ever come and so to save the old and to make the new beautiful is terribly important.”
5. False. On Inauguration Day, surrounded by matrons wearing furs, she wore a beige wool coat edged in fur with a muff of sable. “So the first impression you had of Jackie,” Oleg Cassini recounts triumphantly in the audio tour, “was of a very young woman surrounded by bears.”
6. False. In a March 1962 letter, she insisted on appointing the White House with stemware from West Virginia rather than from a foreign country because “the poverty there hit me more than it did in India–maybe because I just didn’t realize it existed in the U.S.–little pinched children on rotting porches with pregnant mothers–young mothers–but all their teeth gone from bad diet. So I would practically break all the glasses to order new ones each week–it’s the only way I have to help them.”
7. The rumor is that Jackie wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention there. One Kennedy book says her mother had told her size 10 feet were too big.
–Wendy Donahue
