Kennedys Have Clothes Sense

Press, Volume C, Issue 29520, 23 May 1961, Page 2

Kennedys Have Clothes Sense

[This if the fourth tn a series of six articles by KATE LANG, well-known author and journalist, on the tastes of the President and Mrs John F. Kennedy.]

Samuel Harris is a gravel-voiced, twinkleeyed, straight-talking New York tailor, the third generation of a firm that once made clothes for Grover Cleveland.

Oleg Cassini is a wiry, impeccable man with a thin moustache and a wide smile who came to the United States from Europe, whose brother is a society columnist, and whose mother is a countess.

Mr Harris works on 57th street, in his shirt sleeves and with a yellow tape measure slung around his neck. Mr Cassini works on Seventh avenue, in a navy, blue pin-striped suit. In the hands of these two able gentlemen lies a good part of the sartorial destiny of America. When John F. Kennedy first took his seat in Congress in 1947, he thought nothing of appearing on the House floor like a Harvard sophomore, in sneakers, old khaki pants, and a rumpled seersucker jacket This was before he had any traffic with Mr Harris. Now, his friends consider him “practically a dude in comparison.” The conscientious though irreverent Mr Harris believes he should relieve his clients of all clothes problems, leav. ing them free to concentrate on more important worries. On the day of our visit to H. Harris and Company we ran smack into Averell Harriman. Mr Harris also numbers among his clientele Nelson Rockefeller and Thomas Finletter. Altogether, it would seem that he is releasing a lot of energy for the settling of world affairs. Broad Shoulders In making clothes for the President, he is governed by Kennedy’s proportions and temperament The President has exceptionally broad shoulders and a very nar. row waist (he measures 40 inches about the chest 32 about the waist; most men have a 40-chest and a 36. waist). “I give him two-button suits because he needs a long line of jacket to make him look taller than broader.” Mr Harris told us. "Otherwise you'd see nothing but shoulders.”

Asked about the two-versus three-button controversy, Mr Harris said. "I dress my customers the way they should look, not the way everyone else is looking.” The President’s clothes are fairly loose-fitting, so as not to bind him as he runs hell for leather through a “typical day.” He doesn’t own an overcoat, doesn’t like hats or vests because they get in his way. He does have a cash, mere topcoat, which he seldom wears because, as Mr Harris put it, “the President has steam heat instead of blood.

“Last winter, after all the newspaper pictures of him in the snow and cold without a hat,” said Mr Harris. “I started to get complaints from women who thought he would catch cold. I said. Tm his tailor, not his mother’.” The President does not wear brown, nor does he like tweed jackets and sports clothes. Among the swatches he has chosen for recent suits are a fine gray pinstripe a muted gray herringbone, a nailhead worsted, a navy-blue with a white stripe, and a plain navy blue. When we said they look as if they had all been dipped in a huge bottle of ink. Mr Harris said, “He’s the Presi. dent of the United States, not a playboy.” English tailors consider Kennedy a conservative, not en old-fashioned dresser, and certainly one of the bestcreseed heads of state.

President Kennedy clearly feels that being well-dressed is part of the simple good manners of public life, and goes at it with a sense of noblesse oblige. Other public figures, such as Anthony Drexel Biddle and the Duke of Windsor, are personally concerned with clothes almost to the point of fetish. The President leaves it all to Mr Harris, who just manages to snatch five minutes for a fitting. "Elegance,” Oleg Cassini told us, "is the art of renunciation.” It is a quality that Mrs Kennedy has by the bushel.

She has learned what lines and colours are best for her and buys nothing that does not suit her taste and her way of life. While she has always had a daring and original fashion sense—she was wearing lots of pink long before it became this year’s big fashion news—she is not an extremist and will not wear a line just because it is new. Though seldom seen in a fur coat, she does have a pale, silver, brown mink coat that is cut along casual lines and belted, like a polo coat. She wears little jewellery; ber signature is a triple strand of pearls. One rarely sees her wearing any ring other than her wedding band, which is a plain narrow gold strip. She likes the look of either two-piece dresses or onepiece dresses made to look like two pieces. She has a strong feeling for rich brocades, and her favourite “little dinner dress” look is opulent brocade very simply cut Invariably the necklines of her clothes either stand away or are cut away.

She likes a high-waisted. almost little-girl look. Some of her friends remember her as a "pink girl”—her preference for that colour shows itself not only in her wardrobe but in her decoration—but Mr Cassini believes Mrs Kennedy will be wearing many of the lively pastel colours in this big colour year.

Both Mr Cassini and Kenneth of Lily Dache. her hairdresser, have enormous respect for Mrs Kennedy’s judgment and enjoy working for her enormously. "She has the taste to allow an expert to use his taste—not like the women who come in to me with photographs to be copied,” Kenneth told us. Admirers Mr Cassini said. ’’She’s bound—because of her beauty and selectivity—to be a figure that women, especially young women, will want to emulate. She’ll have many admirers abroad, too.” How is Mrs Kennedy’s fashion influence making itself felt this spring? Mr Cassini is somewhat disturbed that the women of America, be they longlegged or lumpy, teen-aged or motherly, pear-shaped or concave, imitate the Jackie look without adapting it to their own specifications. But the collection he designed for his regular customers was unadorned, heavy on black, white, and pink, and largely in the princess-like sihouette—and he does admit Mrs Kennedy inspires all the clothes he designs. "It’s like

the subtle influence of the subject over the portrait painter.” As for Paris, we do not know whether Mrs Kennedy caused the trend or simply predicted it, but the spring collections were full of little princess reefers, supple-lined and aglow with pink. Mrs Kennedy is rather unhappy at present about the over-emphasis placed on her position as a fashion leader She is more interested in her official duties and her new plans for the White House. And she. like Mr Cassini, is not working for a "Jackie look” to be aped across the country.

As for the President, if he were more interested in clothes he would probably be just as disturbed at the new demand for two-button suits.

As it is, however, he has too many other things on his mind.—New York Herald Tribune Inc.