Jacqueline Kennedy was not regarded as a fantastic beauty by the women of Chez Ninon.
She appeared stunning in pictures, they do say. She was skilled at posing and directing her wide-set vision. She admired how her square figure was highlighted by the designs of French couturiers.
She was aware of the hues that appealed to her and the impact of a style statement.
The first woman therefore placed an order for a raspberry-pink, double-breasted, wool bouclé coat with military blue trim from Chez Ninon, the New York store run by Sophie Shonnard and Nona McAdoo Park that had been dressing society women since 1927.
The dress was a genuine Chanel from the 1961 fall/winter set. A “fushia ( sic ) wool suit” was ordered for$ 495 on December 19, 1960, according to a receipt kept by renowned fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who worked for Sophie and Nona in the 1960s and documented street style for decades. Given that Sophie and Nona may have examined the Chanel collection in Paris and made their judgments about Jackie’s preferences, the red suit might have been the culprit.
50 years afterwards, according to the records, Palm Beach still considers Trump to be one of its own.
Isabel and Nona were among the first Americans to take authorized copies from Paris to New York. Their sense of style was honed by their own high-society lifestyle. Jackie’s red suit was mistakenly thought to be a Chanel because it resembled one simply: Chanel was the source of the design, fabric, trims, and buttons.
After author and lawmaker Clare Boothe Luce accused Mrs. Kennedy of having a Marie-Antoinette time and purchasing too some European clothes, Nona declared to the media in January 1962,” We make all our personal clothes here, some to our original design and some copied from European models.”
Nona remarked,” Everything Mrs. Kennedy has bought from us is made with American work, and I believe that is what is being questioned around.” She was n’t going to accept any criticism from Luce. After all, Nona McAdoo Park learned her social savvy from her parents, President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of the treasury, who nearly won the Democratic nomination for president in 1924. Republican was Lucie.
” Exquisitely attired and covered in blood.”
Jackie’s red suit rose to become the most fabled attire for women in British history.
The world witnessed her walk on top of the foldable they were riding in as shots rang out 60 years earlier, on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. She also stood, cold and covered in her father’s heart, as Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office on Air Force One.
She resisted taking off her green suit. Oh no, she remarked. ” I want them to witness what they did to Jack.”
” Her hair ( was ) falling in her face but ( she was ) very composed… Mrs. Kennedy’s dress was stained with blood,” Lady Bird Johnson said of the first lady during the swearing-in. It almost completely covered one knee, and her right sleeve was caked with her father’s heart. That beautiful lady, dressed exquisitely, and covered in blood, was apparently one of the most moving sights.
Before Life magazine published a JFK monument issue on November 29, the majority of Americans were unaware that Mrs. Kennedy’s suit was green. While television reports and publications of the time were in black and white, that matter was in colour.
The green coat was donated to the National Archives on July 29, 2003, and Caroline Kennedy signed a contract mandating that it never be displayed or used to “in any means dishonor the recollection of Mrs. Kennedy or President Kennedy, or produce any grief or suffering to members of their family.” Family members who are still alive may discuss whether the lawsuit will ever be seen in 2103.
Chez Ninon dress is currently on display.
Over the years, other significant products in Mrs. Kennedy’s outfit have been on display. A replica of the Chez Ninon outfit that the first woman wore to a state dining in 1961 is on show at West Palm Beach’s Richard and Pat Johnson Park and Recreation Museum through May.
Chez Ninon created the evening gown, which featured a black silk velvet bodice and yellow silk velvet trousers. It was modeled after the 1961 Nina Ricci style. According to a ticket Bill Cunningham saved in 1961, Mrs. Kennedy paid$ 323 for it because he understood the historical significance of the first lady’s possessions.
Jackie has professional value as well. The replica displayed in the past museum’s” Endless Summer: Palm Beach Resort Wear” exhibit bears the moniker” Black Tie Oleg Cassini,” a mass-market manufacturer from the 1990s who had granted licenses to use the brand. This dress’s style, whether it was classic or a replica, had nothing to do with Oleg Cassini.
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Cassini, who is the custom most strongly associated with Mrs. Kennedy, sold himself as her “official designer.” However, the women of Chez Ninon may be regarded as Jackie’s main fashionistas. When she traveled to Paris in 1961 with JFK wearing both Cassini and Chez Ninon creations, she asked Sophie and Nona to keep an eye out for her attire needs while attending twice-yearly couture shows there.
Jackie sent White House artist Cecil W. Stoughton to New York to take pictures of Chez Ninon’s Spring 1962 series because she had such faith in their taste. In a 2002 meeting, Stoughton recalled the following tale:
You know Jackie likes the styles, outfits, and things, says Tish Baldridge. She is unable to view the flower set in New York because doing so would upset Chez Ninon’s clients. She had intended to go. But she changed her mind. She also requests that you go take photographs of every fashion. I took off for New York with a camcorder in my luggage and lots of lighting. In order to get the front of the dress and the rear projection at the same time if I sat over to the area on an angle, I made plans with the present hostess to place the girls in their gowns before a full-length picture, which there were plenty of. I did this all day. 40 or 50 gowns and bands, I’m not sure how some.
He placed them in an record for Mrs. Kennedy so she could consider placing her purchase.
The first woman appeared in a dark suit on February 14, 1962, for an 80 million-viewing CBS special about her staged visit of the White House. This may have been because it was Valentine’s Day. On television, the plain suit with three big buttons on the left side appeared black, but it was actually a brilliant red Christian Dior that Chez Ninon had recreated and that was made in America.
She wore several bracelets, including one that looked like an teeth and gold ring by Tiffany’s Jean Schlumberger, as well as a three-strand choker made of pearls. The first girl amassed a large collection of Schlumberger rings, earning the moniker” Jackie.” Do you want one? Reproductions can be found for$ 60, but they cost about$ 55, 000 at Tiffany’s.
Schlumberger became well-known in New York thanks to Sophie and Nona, despite the fact that renowned style writer Diana Vreeland is frequently credited with discovering him. They hired him to create Chez Ninon’s clothing after seeing the stunning icons he made for Elsa Schiaparelli in Paris in the 1930s. Schlumberger’s dresses for Chez Ninon were generally sketched in the New York Daily News ‘ female sections in 1941.
Schlumberger joined Tiffany in 1956 and began creating beautiful flashlights for the same socialites that Chez Ninon and the Duchess of Windsor, who was not Nona and Sophie’s friend, were wearing.
When they were both attending socialite balls in Baltimore, Nona had met Wallis Warfield, and when she became a princess, she refused to bow down to him, according to Bill Cunningham in the 2018 video” The Times of Bill Curingham.”
Tim Coy, Sophie’s nephew, claims that” they thought she was abrasive and a cultural climber.”
The duke was not included in the 1940 International Best-Dressed List. Nona was on the judging section, for starters.
” At their room, it was just merriment and joy.”
Edward H.” Ted” Coy, a Yale football legend who was so well-known and attractive that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short-story personality was based on him, was the great-grandfather of Tim Coly.
The most stunning and well-known rose in the South was Sophie Meldrim. Numerous people courted her, sending jewels and products to her Savannah house, now known as the” Green-Meldrim House,” which is renowned for serving as General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Civil War headquarters.
The granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad duke, also caught the attention of young Sophie, but he bore her. In an interview conducted just before her passing in 1980 at the age of 92, Sophie said,” All he talked about was boats and ships.”
Tim Coy claims that Isabel was similar to Scarlett O’Hara but without the deceit.
Isabel eloped with Ted Coy in 1913 after being mesmerized by him because he was an athlete and a Yankee who stood out from her Southern admirers. Tim Coy’s parents, Peter, and Ted Jr., were their two brothers. Following their divorce in 1925, Ted Coy wed renowned movie star Jeanne Eagels in the medical facility of Nona’s next husband, Dr. Edward S. Cowles, who is regarded as the primary “celebrity physician,” after she passed away from a drug abuse in 1929.
To keep track of Sophie and Nona’s romantic relationships and their entwined communities, one needs a calculator. Nona was married four times before Sophie’s second father, businessman Horatio S. Shonnard, divorced her in 1944 on charges of emotional cruelty. In 1942, Peter, Sophie’s child, wed Sally McAdoo, the daughter of Nona, Francis ‘ brother, and the two of them became related.
In the end, Paris and their relationship were their real loves.
In his text” Fashion Climbing,” which was released in 2018, two decades after his passing, Cunningham wrote,” The shop was an exclusive club where all knew each other.” Molly McAdoo, Nona’s sister-in-law, oversaw the shop, and a few classy friends who were out of luck sold the clothes to more companions. The store was a huge hit right away because they followed their own formula for dressing their associates in appropriate attire. However, their people were appalled that they had opened their store. They believed that young women from affluent families simply did n’t enter the business world because they were only educated in the finer points of home and card games.
For their age and class, Sophie and Nona were exceptional women: sophisticated, humorous, arrogant, impartial, and whip-smart. The allure of Sophie balanced Nona’s humour. Chez Ninon, their child, enjoyed 50 years of success.
Nona, who passed away in 1971 at the age of 78, was described by Darling as” We were entirely opposite, but we adored each other.”
For the majority of their lives, they shared a magnificent apartment in New York.
Tim Coy recalls that “it was really merriment and joy at their apartment.” When he visited Yale again, his mother Sophie and aunt Nona briefly bemoaned the fact that they had chosen to pursue careers in fashion rather than in the arts or literature.
The most fashionable second lady of all time was able to use the French styles she adored, including her remarkable red coat, thanks to Sophie Shonnard and Nona McAdoo Park, but they did not give themselves the credit that history has given them.
Past associate director of The Palm Beach Post Jan Tuckwood. She is penning a book about Nona McAdoo Park and Sophie Shonnard.
