OLEG CASSINI - ICON OF STYLE

I was adored by woman, I must confess.' From any other man this would sound conceited. From Oleg Cassini it was a statement of fact, as might well be true his opinion that he was the world’s second best-dressed man, after the Duke of Windsor.

The playboy fashion designer dressed Hollywood and, appropriately, lived a Hollywood story: part of an aristocratic family that had to flee revolutionary Russia (his mother a countess, his father one of Tsar Nicholas II’s diplomats), Cassini was raised in Florence where his mother opened a dress shop. A talented teenage artist – Cassini trained under de Chirico – financial problems meant that he too opened a dressmaking business, in Rome. ‘In those days,’ he said, ‘to be a designer was almost as bad as being a tailor. I thought it was the end.’

As if life had not been, to outsiders’ eyes, glamorous enough already, it was, in fact, just the beginning. He moved to the US with a portfolio of costume designs and a change of name (he was born Oleg Loiewski) and, after work with several fashion houses, launched Oleg Inc. That brought him into contact with the beauties of the age and also proved the launch of a roll-call of highprofile
romances.

First was the marriage to cough drop heiress Merry Fahrney, divorce from whom was shrouded in accusation and counter-accusation of adultery, with Cassini even calling their cook and butler to the stand to give salacious evidence. Then, after moving to Hollywood – where he would design costumes for the likes of Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamour, Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford – he eloped with Gene Tierney.
After their divorce, he began an affair with Grace Kelly – one that looked to be heading to the alter until, pressured by her patrician family, she announced she was marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco. Somewhere along the line, Cassini managed also to fit in relationships with Betty Grable, Lana Turner and Ursula Andress.

But the idea that Cassini was adored by women was not far from the truth. Not only was he a romantic of the old school – during WW2 he transferred from theCoastguard to the US Cavalry, only to be disappointed by the news that the Army was phasing out combat on horseback – but his costumes transformed them, boosting their femininity without turning them into cartoons. ‘My philosophy is this: do not tamper with the anatomy of a woman’s body. Do not camouflage it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want every woman to look like a little boy.’ It’s an appeal Emma Somerset has recognised too: this autumn it will be the exclusive UK stockist of Oleg Cassini day and evening dresses.

The women in Cassini’s life were typically fiercely loyal in return: Tierney told 20th Cenury Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck that she would not star in 1946’s hit The Razor’s Edge unless Cassini designed the costumes. Zanuck, a notorious bulldog, relented, even hiring Cassini to design all of his wife’s clothes too. But the woman for whom Cassini is most famously associated is the one with whom the relationship was purely platonic: the First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who wanted to be dressed by an American-based designer and in 1960 appointed him as her personal couturier.

The young President and his wife were the first in the White House to, in a new televisual age, understand the power of image. Cassini
gave the First Lady a concept wardrobe designed to be ‘A little advanced and thus admired by her people.’
Every one of the 300 outfits created for her was widely copied, making Cassini one of the most influential designers of the time: pill-box hats, geometric shapes and clean lines (all the better to be read at a distance), boxy jackets, outsize buttons, light but luxurious fabrics, strong colour, A-line or shoulderless dresses, were all part of the Cassini look.
So was plenty of décolletage for eveningwear,such that on one occasion Cassini had to convince the President of the design’s historic roots before he could be persuaded of its appropriateness in front of the American public (‘the look is more than a thousand years old. The ancient Egyptians would have considered this dress rather conservative,’ Cassini told him). The public, of course, lapped it up. Cassini called it ‘a new American elegance’.

He claimed he had made just one item for Jacqueline Kennedy he deeply regretted: a leopard fur coat that, in the brief craze it caused, was responsible for the death of many animals. ‘I feel guilty to this day,’ said Cassini.
The designs were not the most original perhaps (Cassini acknowledged a debt to Givenchy), but Cassini gave them his own spin and they made a name for him. Indeed, Cassini was one of the first designers to appreciate the financial muscle that licensing agreements could provide, and he lent his name to everything from luggage to lipgloss, as well as to menswear, to which he introduced ‘feminine’
colour. That gives him an enterprise and a fashion influence that will continue longer still.