JFK+50: Volume 7, No. 2384
MRS. KENNEDY SELECTED EVERYTHING FOR THE WHITE HOUSE EXCEPT...Southampton, New York (JFK+50) Eighty-eight years ago today, July 28, 1929, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis* was born here in Southampton. Jackie attended Vassar, the Sorbonne in France and graduated from George Washington University in 1951 with a BA in French literature. Miss Bouvier married Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts in 1953.
As First Lady from January 20, 1961 to November 22, 1963, Mrs. Kennedy brought "grace, wit, vitality, cosmopolitan glamour and savoir faire" to the White House.
Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer writes that after JFK's election to the presidency, Jackie worked with her New York decorator, Mrs. Henry Parish**,to select "fabrics for draperies, under curtains, upholstery and strips of carpeting correlated for each room" of the Executive Mansion.
Ms. Thayer adds...
"In less than two hours, Mrs. Kennedy, whose decisions were swift and incisive, had selected everything except for the materials for her husband's bedroom. This she left to the President."
*Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) competed in horse riding and was a successful student of many languages. Jackie was one of the youngest and most popular First Ladies in American history.
Jackie married Aristotle Onassis in 1968 & after his death she worked for Viking Press & Doubleday.
**Dorothy May Kinnicutt Parish (1910-1994) was born in Morristown, NJ & founded an interior decorating business in Far Hills, NJ in 1933. It became Parish-Hadley Associates of Manhattan.
Vogue Magazine once described Mrs. Parish as "the most famous of all living women interior designers whose ideas have influenced lifestyles all over America."
SOURCES
"Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years," by Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1967.
"Sister Parish, Grande Dame of American Interior Decorating, Is Dead at 84," by Eric Pace, September 10, 1994, The New York Times.
The Red Room
The White House
Photo by John White (2017)
