Pink Chanel suit of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

Pink Chanel suit of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy
The president and his wife arrive at Love Field, Dallas
Artist	Chanel
Year	1961
Type	Double-breasted pink wool suit with navy trim

A pink Chanel suit was worn by Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy on November 22, 1963, when her husband, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Made of wool bouclé, the double-breasted, strawberry pink and navy trim collared suit was matched with a trademark matching pink pillbox hat. After President Kennedy was assassinated, Jacqueline Kennedy insisted on wearing the suit, stained with his blood, during the swearing-in of Lyndon B. Johnson on Air Force One and for the flight back to Washington, D.C. with the President’s body.

Jacqueline Kennedy was a fashion icon, and this outfit is arguably the most referenced and revisited of all of her items of clothing and her trademark.

There was long-time question among fashion historians and experts whether the suit was a genuine Chanel or a quality copy purchased from New York's semiannual Karl Lagerfeld or Chez Ninon collections, resolved in favor of a "Chanel" by her biographer, Justine Picardie.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chanel suit was one of the strongest symbols of bourgeois female chic that could be found anywhere in the Western world, evoking a powerful image of a sophisticated, intelligent and independent modern woman. During this era it became the "wardrobe staple of the upwardly mobile American female which could fit almost every daytime occasion that required a woman to dress stylishly." Although women wearing pink in the 21st century is common, pink was new to fashion in the 1950s and was a color loved and even popularized to an extent in American fashion by Mamie Eisenhower, who endorsed a color which, according to cultural historian Karal Ann Marling, was called "Mamie Pink." Given that the Chanel suit was a strong statement of an independent woman, the color pink has an element of traditional femininity, perhaps evading the foreign and feminist attributes associated with the Chanel suit in a conservative American society.