September is a popular month for weddings, and it seems the same applies to wedding dress auctions.
Bonhams’ “Classic Luxury: Style Icons” auction, which ran from September 16 to 26, saw the Valentino dress that Jacqueline Kennedy wore for her wedding to Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis sell for more than triple its pre-sale estimate. The final bid was $24,320.
Five years after the assassination of her first husband, President John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy wed Onassis on his private island of Skorpios in the Aegean Sea. The couple had known each other for years and had become “very chummy” on Onassis’ yacht, “Christina O,” a 325-foot vessel that had been transformed from a Canadian destroyer escort ship into a 10-bedroom Jet Set carrier at a cost of $3 million, requiring a crew of 50 people.
Kennedy’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, announced her daughter’s plans to wed a second time within a week of the nuptials. Their union was not well-received by many Americans, who felt “she should stay the lily-white widow of a martyred President,” according to a past WWD report.
The beige chiffon and lace dress was offered to Bonhams by a private couple who had befriended Onassis and Kennedy on the tycoon’s yacht. In October 1968, WWD reported that Kennedy Onassis had worn the dress to the wedding of Bunny Mellon’s daughter Eliza Lloyd and Viscount Moore, where Caroline Kennedy was a flower girl and John F. Kennedy, Jr. was a page boy. Valentino made a new version of the same dress for the wedding in Greece.
Onassis had also presented Kennedy with diamond and ruby pendant earrings from Van Cleef & Arpels in 1968, which were the same earrings that Onassis’ longtime paramour, Maria Callas, had worn the month before, according to WWD.
Kennedy’s wedding to the billionaire Onassis elevated her status from millionaire to the echelons of her friends Bunny Mellon and Betsy Whitney, WWD reported in 1968. The former first lady was also said to be “tight with a dollar before meeting Onassis,” according to her WWD obituary.
Marissa Speer, Bonhams’ head of sale for handbags and fashion in the U.S., described the sale as “a rare privilege,” adding,
“The Kennedys are without question, one of the most prominent families in modern American history. Jacqueline Kennedy’s 1968 couture ensemble is not only an important piece of fashion history marking the emergence of one of the most stylish women in the world, but it also showcases an important design in maison Valentino’s history.”
Other notable items sold included John F. Kennedy Jr.’s Calvin Klein tuxedo ($2,560), a Calvin Klein suit and black tie ($2,560), and a Giorgio Armani overcoat from the 1990s ($10,240).
Interestingly, Kennedy’s first wedding dress, an elaborate Anne Lowe ballgown with a fitted bodice that required 50 yards of fabric, has also been in the news this week. Sony’s Tristar will highlight how the largely unheralded Black designer Lowe came to design that historic wedding gown in a feature film entitled “The Dress.” The biopic will be based on Piper Huguley’s historical fiction book “By Her Own Design.” Serena Williams and two-time Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter will be involved in producing the film, with Carter handling the costume designs.
Katya Roelse, who created a replica of Lowe’s wedding gown for an exhibition at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library last fall, explained the differences between Kennedy’s two wedding dresses. She described Kennedy’s marriage to Onassis as “an act of independence” and a sign of her “asking for what she wanted: protection and comfort, despite how unpopular it made her.” Roelse believes Kennedy wore Valentino because it demonstrated her maturity, pleasing herself and taking a risk by wearing an unconventional two-piece ensemble by a designer who was not yet a household name.
