Oleg Cassini Women's Fashion Brand

Oleg Cassini became particularly well known as a designer for Jacqueline Kennedy whilst she was First Lady of the United States. Utilizing the technique and high fashion fabrics of French couture, Cassini's unique designs for Jacqueline Kennedy ushered in a new era of timeless simplicity based on clean lines and crisp forms and opulent and luxurious fabrics. Cassini brought American design to the world stage as the First Lady's identity became synonymous with sophistication and taste, and the Jackie look that he created was copied by women all over the world.

Oleg Cassini was an American fashion designer born to an aristocratic Russian family with maternal Italian ancestry. He came to the United States as a young man after starting as a designer in Rome, and quickly got work with Paramount Pictures. In 1941, his first film was I Wanted Wings, for which he created the look for its star, newcomer Veronica Lake. The path - Rome training, Hollywood costume work, then the most watched wardrobe in the world - is the designer's whole formation in one paragraph, and the clean-line discipline of the Kennedy designs is visible in it from the film years onward.

Ready-to-Wear, Broadway and the Fifth Avenue Windows

After World War II, Cassini designed ready-to-wear dresses while continuing to design for television, motion pictures and Broadway theatre. The head of Lord & Taylor, Dorothy Shaver, provided the Oleg Cassini Collection the entirety of the store's Fifth Avenue store front windows to launch the collection - a retail honour, and a measure of how completely the designer crossed from costume into commerce. A whole Fifth Avenue frontage, given to one collection's launch, is department-store endorsement of the strongest kind its era offered.

Cassini also took his designs on the road to his customers in trunk shows and special fashion events in order to promote the new lines. The in-store events evolved into the emerging medium of television, and Cassini displayed his product on Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Dinah Shore, Phil Donahue and Good Morning America. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson provided nightly recognition, as Carson had a line designed for him by Cassini, which he wore exclusively for the show. Shop the label by its stated formula - clean lines, crisp forms, luxurious fabric - and judge any Cassini dress on whether all three survive in the garment in hand.

The Jackie Look as a Shopping Standard

Timeless simplicity is a demanding standard, not a plain one: a clean line leaves nowhere for poor cutting to hide, and opulent fabric must carry a design that deliberately refuses ornament. When evaluating an Oleg Cassini piece, check the seam lines and the fabric first - technique and high fashion fabrics, then form. A piece that depends on decoration to hold attention has left the Cassini brief, however elegant its label.

Oleg Cassini died from complications of an aneurysm in Manhasset, New York, in 2006. No official Oleg Cassini website is listed here. Rome, Paramount, a 1941 debut film, Fifth Avenue windows under Dorothy Shaver, television trunk shows, Johnny Carson's exclusive line and the Jackie look copied worldwide: Oleg Cassini is the O letter's First Lady designer, and his clothes are bought on line, form and fabric.

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