THE ICONS
EVERY GENERATION HAS ITS FASHION STARS — WOMEN THE WORLD OBSERVES AND TO WHOM OTHERS LOOK FOR INSPIRATION. WHILE SOME ATTAINED THEIR STATUS THROUGH EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES, OTHERS FLEXED THEIR STYLE MUSCLE MERELY BY LOOKING GREAT. HERE, WWD’S FAVORITE FASHION ICONS.
Byline: Lorna Koski
Jackie O
We will never see her likes again. Nearly forty years after the end of Camelot, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis remains America’s ultimate icon of chic. As the youngest and most stylish first lady ever, her image is emblazoned in the collective national psyche. Together, she and JFK changed the world view of America and the country’s view of itself, with their glorious combination of power, youth and glamour. When her status shifted in a moment from devoted wife to grieving widow, her legend grew as the epitome of tragic grace. She was only 34 years old. For years, she was the most famous woman in the world, and one of the most admired.
And from the beginning, WWD watched closely, sometimes seeming utterly obsessed. The newspaper’s love affair with Jackie, in fact, was probably the longest and most ardent in its history. No matter than her clothes were often unexceptional, that she wore exactly what any sophisticated woman in her social circle wore at the time. Jackie made it all sparkle, from the spare little shifts, square-cut suits and pillboxes hats of the White House years, to the racy T-shirt and tight pants uniform she adopted in the Seventies.
On July 13, 1960, more than four months before the general election, John Fairchild wrote from Paris: “Those smart and charming Kennedys — Jacqueline, wife of the Senator, and his mother, Mrs. Joseph P., are running for election on the Paris Couture fashion ticket.
“The Kennedys are not enough anti-American-fashion to make a Republican campaign issue, but the French Couture ranks both as among the biggest United States private customers who pay nothing less than $350 and on up into the thousands for a Paris couture model.
“Together, the two Kennedys spend an estimated $30,000 per year for Paris clothes and hats — more than most United States professional buyers.”
This story ignited a media firestorm, famously prompting Jackie to comment that she couldn’t pay that much for clothes, “unless I bought sable underwear.”
The newspaper continued to chronicle Jackie’s wardrobe through her White House years, initially in sketches, then later in photographs. But it was after the assassination of her husband, when she moved to New York, that WWD really went to town. In fact, photographer Tony Palmieri was on the Jackie beat so often that she addressed him warmly, by name. Those photos show Jackie to be a master of reinvention; in each phase of her life, as a role was outworn, she created a new one, and used fashion to reflect the shift.
On April 29, 1965, a double-page spread titled “The New York Jacqueline,” detailed her life in the city in prose replete with ellipses and unexpected capitalizations. Lunches at Le Mistral were described breathlessly, and this note also appeared: “Whatever she does/Is The Thing to Do,/Whatever she wears is/The Thing to Wear./Whatever she sees is/The Thing to See.” When she went to London in 1965, there were double-page spreads on what John-John and Caroline were wearing. When Jackie raised her hemlines even a little, it was noted. When she wore a fur hat, it was sketched. When she went shopping, her purchases were shown in yet another double-page spread. The headline for one 1966 story read, “Jackie Has the Knack of Looking Darling,” a title that reflected two of the hit films of the time.
She wore a lace-trimmed Valentino dress to marry Aristotle Onassis on his private island of Scorpios in 1968, and went on what were rumored to be frenzied shopping sprees to buy (“one in every color”) the dozens of T-shirts, slim pants and little frocks that marked her Seventies look. In the late Seventies, Jackie O became something else again, a career woman, first at Doubleday and then at Viking Press. During this phase, she started to wear Carolina Herrera, understated clothes that suited her new role to a T.
In the Seventies, WWD was acronym-crazy, and many were applied to Jackie, most famously, Jackie O. At one point, Jackie and Caroline Kennedy were called the “OKs,” then the former first lady was called “Jackie No,” and, still later, Jackie, Caroline and John-John became “The Cheery Os.”
In the Eighties, however, the coverage gradually took on a more measured tone. In January of 1985, Jackie turned up looking smashing in Valentino for a book party at the Morgan, and in April of that year, she was photographed after having lunch with the Maharani of Jaipur at Mortimer’s. In 1986, Caroline Kennedy married Edwin Schlossberg on Martha’s Vineyard. Both the bride and her mother wore Herrera.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of cancer on April 19, 1994. WWD recorded the event with a page one story and two double-page spreads. “She was a great lady in our history and has been a model for American women for years, such an example of elegance and discretion,” said Valentino, adding, “she was the star of my career.”
Herrera called Jackie, “American style for the past 30 years.” She added, “she was brave, beautiful and classical, and a model for millions of people around the world. And Jackie was just as beautiful inside as out.”
But it may be Oscar de la Renta and the late Gianni Versace who summed her up best. “She really was an extraordinary person,” de la Renta said. “I think, probably unwillingly, she became the sweetheart of America, an example to every American woman of how to look and conduct oneself. The fascination stayed strong, because, as she retreated into private life, there was more and more curiosity about her and more admiration. She always behaved beautifully — a wonderful mother, with a tremendous sense of family.”
“She did for the American fashion image what no one else has done,” said Versace. “She created a real pure gold image for America. To me, she was always perfect — she refused to be in the spotlight, but she was anyway, and that’s a real star. She was never out of fashion.”
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Babe Paley
Truman Capote called his favorite socialites his “swans.” With her pale skin, patrician bone-structure and impeccable posture, Babe Paley led the flock. One of the three beautiful Cushing sisters of Boston, she garnered considerably more publicity that her husband, CBS founder Bill Paley, appearing on every conceivable best-dressed list for most of her adult life. Babe’s fashion signatures were simple, clean-lined clothes — tunics, slinky siren dresses at night and plenty of pants for day — and perfectly cut bouffant hair. In the Fifties and Sixties, she favored designers Hubert de Givenchy, Norman Norell, Mainbocher, Chanel, Galitzine and Fabiani in the Fifties and Sixties, and in the Seventies, Halston and Adolfo. In July of 1963, WWD posed, and answered, the question: “Who is America’s Most Elegant?” “Beautiful Barbara Paley.”
Coco Chanel
She was, quite simply, the most important designer of the 20th century. More than anyone else, Coco Chanel created the template for modernity that still informs fashion today. Her innate pragmatism and deep-seeded independence fueled her extraordinary sense of style and ultimately, her legacy. Chanel’s inventions are the stuff of legend. She championed suits, the little black dress and piles of fake jewelry, not to mention the whole concept of sportif chic, daring to work in new-fangled jersey fabrics. WWD started covering Chanel in her first year in business. The earliest mention of her work appeared on July 27, 1914 with a Deauville dateline: “Gabriel [sic] Chanel has on display some extremely interesting sweaters which embrace new features…A great success is predicted…”
Madonna
She Is pop music’s ultimate style chameleon. Madonna Louise Ciccone has cast herself as the latter-day Marilyn Monroe of “Material Girl,” the Gaultier-clad hood ornament of “Blonde Ambition,” the pretend-fetishist of her book Sex, and a happily married mom with a country-pop heart. Along the way her fashion signatures have included everything from floppy hairbows to those cone-boob bustiers to Dior-esque suits and veiled hats. And the world hangs on her every change. Year after year, writers and fashionistas who don’t care for her proclaim that Madonna is “over,” and she always proves them wrong. Will her current incarnation as the 42-year-old Mrs. Guy Ritchie, mother to Rocco and Lourdes be her last? Don’t count on it.
Katharine Hepburn
In the late Sixties, when asked about fashion, Katharine Hepburn told WWD, “I haven’t time for it.” A characteristic remark from a woman who lived her life and forged her career with the independence of a maverick. Onscreen, her lean frame and aristocratic, high-cheekboned face were ideal for fashion, but she always looked better in something streamlined rather than froufrou. Offscreen, she wore the same tunics, haberdashery pants, black hat and shoes with low stacked heels for years. With her Yankee forthrightness and thoroughbred good looks, Hepburn projected a consummately modern image than still rings modern today.
Audrey Hepburn
Her three most unforgettable roles were as Sabrina, Holly Golightly and Eliza Dolittle. Her characters projected a certain elegance, one they weren’t always born to, but came up with themselves. Yet Audrey Hepburn’s enduring presence as a fashion icon is about more than her film roles and her long-time collaboration with Hubert de Givenchy. The earliest and most striking of modern gamines, she could make a ballgown, little black dress or pair of capris look effortlessly chic. Her whippet-thin body and aristocratic, doe-eyed countenance mesmerized onscreen and off. She left her career at its height and played only a few roles after that, which is why Hepburn’s lasting image is one of impish — and almost impossibly stylish — youth.
The Supermodels
They set the world’s standards for beauty and glamour, and often live the diva life to its fullest. Although the term Supermodel wasn’t coined until the Eighties, the concept started two decades earlier with Jean Shrimpton, the round-eyed English girl who became the first Mod model. Then along came Twiggy, nee cockney Lesley Hornby, 16, shorthaired and skinny as a matchstick. Dubbed “the face of 1966,” she became famous almost overnight. While apple-pie Americana dominated the early Seventies, later in the decade, Somali-born Iman arrived, lending an exoticism and grace new to Western runways and magazines. By the Eighties, a time when many actresses looked merely ordinary, the supes provided welcomed glamour. Linda Evangelista proclaimed famously, “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.” Christy Turlington was considered by many to be the greatest beauty in the business, while Naomi Campbell fueled her sultry drama-queen image with fabulous runway attitude and a tempestuous love life. Just as the supermodel phenomena appeared to peak in the early Nineties, along came Kate Moss and the waif movement and its offbeat allure. But before the decade’s end, the glorious Gisele Bundchen triggered a bombshell revival. WWD observed that”nobody could get enough of her face, hair and, of course, her memorably curvy body.” Two years later, we still can’t get enough.
Ali Macgraw
In an example of marketing brilliance, she was billed as an “anti-star.” Ali MacGraw wore her hair stick-straight, professed disdain for overt makeup and flaunted a tiny flaw that made her fresh-scrubbed beauty all the more charming: one front tooth crossed over the other. She favored simple clothes, and triggered a fashion rage when she took to wearing litle knitted caps pulled down close to her eyebrows. She showed up for an April 1969 interview with WWD wearing one made from a vintage bag, and in August 1972, told the newspaper, “Being an actress gives one a special kind of adulation, but the star thing has a big, big, big detriment — no privacy.” At that point, her life had already become tabloid fodder. Soon, however, she got her wish and faded from the limelight, a retreat due less to scandal than a limited acting range. But her turn in 1970’s Love Story set the standard for a generation’s coed chic, and for that, MacGraw never has to say she’s sorry.
The Duchess of Windsor
Even her staunchest supporters wouldn’t have called her a great beauty. But American Wallis Warfield Simpson oozed style and a patrician countenance (if not pedigree) that dazzled the Prince of Wales. He ultimately abdicated the throne, and instead of ruling the Empire, the couple ruled cafe society, dedicating their lives to the pursuit of style. WWD was there from the start, observing in 1936, “Mrs. Simpson’s Preference in Apparel Leans to Prettiness Rather Than Severe Elegance.” She favored Schiaparelli and Mainbocher, the latter whose dress she chose for her 1937 wedding. In March of 1966, for example, she was photographed wearing a reversible Venet coat: “The look was great 10 years ago and is even younger today BECAUSE THE DUCHESS IS IMPECCABLE,” wrote WWD.
Yet with time the Windsors’ behavior appeared less than perfect. Rumors swirled that they accepted fees to attend parties, and their frenzied socializing seemed increasingly empty. Still, their obsession with style endured. For their 34th-anniversary party, the Duchess wore HotPants — Hubert de Givenchy’s in brown floral crepe, under a floor-length skirt. Edward died in 1972, Wallis, in 1986. The next year, Sotheby’s sold her extraordinary jewelry collection, including a platinum bracelet set with diamonds and rubies, a gift from Edward while she was still married to her second husband. Its inscription: “Hold Tight.”
Icons in Training
Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez have led Hollywood’s reemergence as the biggest fashion capital of all. Each knows and loves fashion, and each has her own finely developed, specific style. Gwyneth oozes the grace and charm of her private-school upbringing, usually favoring the simplicity of Calvin Klein, with plenty of digressions, such as her pink Ralph Lauren Oscar gown. Gwyneth’s approach to fashion: “I want to wear a dress, not an idea,” she told WWD in 1998. “With an outfit, what matters is if you look pretty.” Seemingly with every move, “J. Lo” shows increasing range and staying power. She uses fashion to express her Latin sensuality with humor and bravado, while flaunting her curves — including her much-written-about, ample posterior — with pride. When she turns up at an event, Jennifer creates high-voltage electricity, whether she’s wearing that now infamous, down-to-there Versace, sprayed-on jeans or see-through Chanel couture.