The Chanel suit Jacqueline Kennedy wore on the day of her husband’s assassination – and why it may never be seen in public again

As artefacts from the 1963 tragedy are on public view for the very first time, the First Lady’s raspberry pink ensemble remains sealed away

jackie kennedy pink suit 1963 assassination
The pink bouclé tweed set was a Chanel design replicated for Jackie in New York Credit: Getty

As the 60th anniversary of President John F Kennedy’s assassination is commemorated today, artefacts and personal items associated with the tragedy are being exhibited for the first time at museum exhibitions in Dallas, where the horrific crime took place, and in America’s capital, Washington DC. 

However, some iconic pieces which took centre stage on that gruesome day will remain hidden from public view, including First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s raspberry pink bouclé tweed suit which was soaked through with blood as she sat beside her husband in the presidential limousine as the fatal shots were fired.

Mrs Kennedy’s ensemble is preserved under climate-controlled conditions and stored flat in special containers at Washington’s National Archives. Access to it is prohibited from public display, research, or any other use. These terms also apply to her blood-stained stockings, as well as the shoes and handbag she brandished that day, which were both navy, to coordinate the suit’s silk trim, her underblouse and the presidential limousine. 

The navy trimmings on Jacqueline's tweed ensemble matched the presidential limousine Credit: Getty

According to an official statement from Washington’s National Archives, the restrictions adhere to a deed associated with the gift of the First Lady’s personal effects by her daughter, Caroline Kennedy. The deed restricts access to the items to safeguard dishonouring their memory and to refrain from causing “grief or suffering to members of their family”.

Because the suit is shielded from public view, details related to it, including its make, have been subject to error and also remain a mystery. In his 2000 bestseller, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life, Donald Spoto, the biographer and theologian, misidentified Elsa Schiaparelli as the suit’s designer probably because shocking pink, the couturier’s signature shade, was similar to the suit’s intense colour. However, most of the former First Lady’s biographers have adhered to the deed’s appendix, which describes it as a “Pink Chanel Suit.” 

Access to Jacqueline's outfit is prohibited from public display, research, or any other use Credit: Getty

In the recently published updated edition of her biography of Gabrielle Chanel, Coco Chanel: The Legend And the Life, Justine Picardie devoted a chapter to explain how the suit was almost but not entirely made by Chanel. “The suit was cut in Paris, made with Chanel buttons … [trimmed with] Chanel grosgrain ribbon, [made from] Chanel tweed but it needed to be sewn for Mrs Kennedy in America,” Picardie writes.

Working with the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, as well as Chanel’s Paris archive, where ongoing research assesses and updates scholarship related to the designer, Picardie uncovered how the outfit was an authorised copy of a Chanel suit made by Chez Ninon. The upscale Park Avenue boutique counted Mrs Kennedy as its top client after her 1953 marriage to JFK, who was then a Massachusetts senator. 

In Chez Ninon’s workroom, expert seamstresses replicated the Paris originals she admired by working on a dressmaker’s dummy made to match her measurements. These adaptations of French clothing outclassed the pirated garments which had flooded the American market until Christian Dior and his Paris contemporaries regulated the making of their own designs by charging selected boutiques and better department stores “caution” fees to produce replicas. 

The practice of producing these “line for line” haute couture copies continued until the advent of designer ready-to-wear in the late 1960s, explains fashion historian Valerie Steele, who is director of the museum at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. Wearing reproductions allowed Mrs Kennedy to halt the harsh criticism that her taste for Paris couture was unpatriotic and frivolous, she says.

So did her enlisting the services of Oleg Cassini. Working as the First Lady’s “Secretary of Style,” the suave New York-based, Paris-born Russian designer adapted to her liking couture by Hubert de Givenchy, who along with Chanel, counted as her favourite designer. “Most American fashion back then was just a copy of French fashion, whether licensed or unlicensed,” adds Steele. “Mrs Kennedy tried to defend herself by shopping at Chez Ninon.”

Cosgrave: 'Similar to how the Princess of Wales often recycles the clothing she wears on official duties, Mrs Kennedy shielded herself from criticism by repeatedly wearing her designer clothes' Credit: Alamy

Picardie’s findings align with the conclusions of Bill Cunningham, the late New York Times fashion photographer who started his career working at Chez Ninon. It is said that he squirrelled away a receipt documenting the purchase of a fuschia “wool suit” on Dec 19 1961. Jan Tuckwood of the Palm Beach Post, who recently broke the story of the sales receipt, notes that it could authenticate the purchase of “the pink suit,” which debuted as part of Chanel’s autumn/winter 1961 couture collection. 

Similar to how the Princess of Wales often recycles the clothing she wears on official duties, Mrs Kennedy shielded herself from criticism by repeatedly wearing her designer clothes. 

The trip to Dallas, for example, marked the seventh time she wore her Chez Ninon Chanel. She wore it to review architecture plans that helped save Lafayette Square, a historic residential enclave north of the White House in September 1962. A month later, it became a backup outfit when, at the 11th hour, a gala, scheduled to honor the Maharaja and Maharani of Jaipur coincided with the Cuban Missile Crisis and was briskly rescheduled as an intimate dinner. “She’d wear the same thing over and over,” recalled James Bernard West, who served as chief usher at the White House during President Kennedy’s term.

A member of the JFK Presidential Library and Museum described the tweed Chanel outfit as the 'blood suit' Credit: Cecil Stoughton/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

If the First Lady was “very casual” in her private life, remarked West, the cultural awareness that she acquired by obtaining a French literature degree from George Washington University and harnessed to transform the White House, also informed the way she revolutionised how First Ladies used their official wardrobe as a diplomatic tool.

The “blood suit,” as it was described to me by a member of the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, was no exception. President Kennedy may have selected the ensemble. Contemplating their trip together to a hostile Republican heartland – where he had been warned off travelling – the movie star handsome, blue-eyed Democrat explained to his wife: “There are going to be all of these rich Republican women … wearing mink coats and diamond bracelets … Show [those] Texans what good taste really is.” 

The photographs of Mrs Kennedy in her blood-spattered finery, standing next to Lyndon Johnson, as he took the oath of office aboard Air Force One and accompanying her husband’s coffin back to the White House, demonstrated to the world superhuman strength which served to bolster her traumatised country. 

This photograph, taken post-assassination, 'demonstrated to the world superhuman strength which served to bolster her traumatised country', writes Cosgrave Credit: getty

“We watched her react and then act with magnificence at the most horrible moment of her life and we would never forget it,” observed Dominick Dunne. “With the instinctive knowledge of the great, knowing when their moment is at hand, she in effect picked up the flag dropped by her fallen husband.” 

It has been said that the tragic images of her foreshadowed the ensuing years that brought chaos to America, from the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War and Watergate. “The brutality of that assassination ended the dream of Camelot – that American politics was being transformed,” observes Picardie. 

“As a writer of books I’m looking at history with a story of world wars and presidents through the prism of clothing and fashion. All too often [fashion] is sort of dismissed as not being relevant to history. History is just told to the stories of generals and presidents. But my belief is that there are profound moments [involving] fashion and the story of women. Jackie Kennedy wearing her pink suit is one of those moments.” 

Bronwyn Cosgrave is the author of Vogue On: Coco Chanel (Quadrille Publishing)