Jackie Kennedy took on her role as First Lady and burgeoning style icon wearing a sleeveless silk chiffon dress, which she helped to design alongside Ethel Frankau of Bergdorf Goodman.

Jackie’s refusal to change her clothes wasn’t solely about projecting an image. After accompanying Kennedy’s body to Maryland’s Bethesda Naval Hospital for a required autopsy, she was no longer on public display. She also had time to change out of her blood-soaked outfit while waiting in the on-site presidential suite.

Jackie popularized the pillbox hat and the Chanel suit in the early 1960s. And, by the end of the decade she made big sunglasses and white jeans into fashion statements, despite their more casual look. From 1960 until her death in 1994, her style made headlines around the world.

13 iconic outfits former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wore. Jackie Kennedy was one of the most influential fashion icons of her era. She popularized some of the most recognizable trends of the ’60s and ’70s, including pillbox hats, tailored coats, and strapless gowns.

Oleg Cassini

Not that Jackie Kennedy’s hairstyles didn’t set fashion trends. Her 1961 inauguration hairdo, the bouffant, defined by the Oxford Dictionary, as [hair] “styled so as to stand out from the head in a rounded shape,” from the French word for ‘swelling,’ swept the nation in popularity.

Marianne Nestorm. 1971–2006

Deceased (1913–2006)

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While Jackie loved French designers like Christian Dior, Balenciaga and Givenchy, she mostly wore Cassini’s American-made couture, which shaped the “Jackie Look” that American women emulated in droves.

170 cm

The garment is now stored out of public view in the National Archives. It will not be seen by the public until at least 2103, according to a deed of Caroline Kennedy, Kennedy’s sole surviving heir.

François Pinton

The main reason Jackie wore sunglasses was so that she could people watch without being caught.

Gucci saddlebag

1947