Oleg Cassini: The Couturier to Camelot

If you are a Millennial or Gen Zer and know who fashion designer Oleg Cassini is, hats off to you. The late designer’s legacy has been all but consumed by conflict between his many “top girls,” turned wives. A better question than “Who was Oleg Cassini?” may actually be “Who was Oleg Cassini married to?” His list of romantic interests ranges from Grace Kelly to Marilyn Monroe, Anika Ekberg, Gene Tierny, and more. Looking at this list it’s easy to write Cassini off as a fame seeking playboy, but knowing the women he surrounded himself with is in fact key to understanding the perspective from which he designed fashion. And seeing as Cassini was the creative mind behind First Lady and style icon Jacqueline Kennedy, his perspective is one you want to understand. 

Oleg Aleksandrovich Cassini was born in 1913 in Paris, France to the Russian Count and Countess Loiewski-Cassini. His father, the Count, was loyal to the Tsar which led to his family losing everything during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The impoverished family fled to Florence, Italy where they took up the last name Cassini to blend in. His mother also set up a profitable clothing store that supported their family and sparked her son’s interest in fashion. 

As a young adult, Cassini studied political science at the University of Florence, fine art at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze under painter Giorgio de Chirico, and apprenticed for French designer Jean Patou. He used his skills to enter a variety of international fashion competitions in Turin. He won awards including the first five prizes in Mostra Della Moda for a silver foil evening dress he hand painted. The prize money was 5,000 lire, enough to open his first boutique in Rome.

In 1936 he and his brother Ghighi Cassini moved to New York City, where Oleg began working for various stores. While in New York City, Cassini married his first wife Merry Fahrney. Fahrney was the heiress to a patent-medicine fortune, but Cassini claimed she nonetheless had married him (a penniless immigrant working in retail) for his title. It’s no wonder that the marriage ended in divorce just four years later. The same year the two split, the young designer also moved cross-country to Hollywood. There, Cassini began work as a sketch designer in the wardrobe department of 20th Century Fox. This gig was how he met and would eventually marry the famous actress Gene Tierney a year later in 1941.

Cassini’s marriage to Tierny enabled him to dress her on and off screen for the 12 very turbulent years they were together. By 1943 their relationship began to show cracks, after their daughter Daria was born severely mentally handicapped and blind as a result of Tierny contracting Measles in the first trimester of her pregnancy. Daria’s condition was the source of great pain and emotional instability for Tierny, who began stepping out on Cassini with various male suitors. During a period of separation in 1947, Tierney even told Cassini she had fallen madly in love with a naval officer who turned out to be none-other than future President John F. Kennedy.  As written in Cassini’s autobiography In My Own Fashion: An Autobiography, Cassini and Tierny reconciled briefly in 1948 and had their second daughter, Christina. But shortly after things fell apart for good, and the two officially divorced in 1953.

Cassini would also meet his most important muse in 1953: Jacqueline Bouvier. Cassini’s hyper-feminine, but ‘50s appropriate styles were widely known and liked by the time the two met, and Bouvier, the francophile fashionista, quickly took to liking Cassini. Bouvier married John F. Kennedy that year, and when he was elected President in 1960, Cassini’s appointment as his friend’s personal couturier soon followed. She dubbed him her Secretary of Style, and in return he earned her the title First Lady of Fashion. Together, the pair crafted an image of elegance and American regency now referred to as the “Jackie Look." It's a romanticized legacy that endures just as JFK's Camelot does.

The secret to the duo's success in Washington was Cassini’s history in Hollywood. By the time Kennedy was elected, most families in the U.S. had a television set in their home and could view the First Lady on it. Cassini was well aware of this fact and used his costume design skills to the advantage, even referring to Jackie Kennedy as “the star in a major film,” in which she played a First Lady. Whether or not Mrs. Kennedy was acting, she looked good doing it. Cassini draped Mrs. Kennedy in emotive fabrics like chiffon and lace. He stylized her outerwear with innocent looking oversized buttons. Most notably, perhaps, he accessorized her with the trademark pillbox hat.

Cassini created 300 total looks for Jackie Kennedy and worked as a fashion designer for 70 years. To date, Cassini has had the longest lasting career of any fashion designer ever. Kennedy’s dresses, including the white Swiss double satin gown which the First Lady wore to the Inaugural Gala in 1961 and was named one of the 50 Dresses that Changed the World by the Design Museum in England, were displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in April of 2020. If you have the chance to see one or more of his designs in person today, take advantage. Cassini may have been a casanova, but his designs and ability to sway trends have stood the test of time, making him (and all the women he dressed) a true style icon.