Short Biography

Cassini studied art under Giorgio de Chirico and eventually gravitated to his mother`s career, fashion, when he took a job sketching for the French couturier Jean Patou. In the late 1930s, he worked as an assistant to the costume designer Edith Head and in the early 1940s was hired by Paramount Pictures.

Among the films Cassini costumed was The Shanghai Gesture, a 1941 film by Josef Von Sternberg, which starred Cassini`s second wife, Gene Tierney, who eventually would only wear Cassini designs onscreen. As a result, Cassini costumes appeared in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), The Razor`s Edge (1946); The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947); That Wonderful Urge (1948); Whirlpool (1949); Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), in which Cassini appeared as a fashion designer; and The Mating Season and On the Riviera (both 1951).

After the war, Cassini designed ready-to-wear dresses while continuing to design for television, motion pictures, and Broadway.

Cassini shot to international stardom, however, in the early 1960s, thanks to his association with Jacqueline Kennedy. "We are on the threshold of a new American elegance thanks to Mrs. Kennedy`s beauty, naturalness, understatement, exposure and symbolism," Cassini said when his selection as the couturier to shape the entire look of the First Lady was announced.

The fashion industry, however, was shocked at Cassini`s selection by the White House. As Women`s Wear Daily journalist John Fairchild wrote in his 1965 book The Fashionable Savages, "Everyone was surprised. Oleg Cassini had been around for years. He was debonair, amusing, social, but none of the fashion intellectuals had considered him an important designer."

The publicity that Cassini`s work for Jacqueline Kennedy received led women from 18 to 80 to copy the look of simple, geometric dresses in sumptuous fabrics and pillbox hats with an elegant coiffure. Meticulously tailored and featuring oversized buttons and boxy jackets, as well as occasionally dramatic décolletage, it was a style that was inspired by the work of Hubert de Givenchy. Cassini designed a reported 300 outfits for the First Lady, including a much-copied coat made of leopard pelts and a heavy satin gown for the inaugural ball in 1961; the Cassini outfits were paid for by her father-in-law, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr..


Cassini in the 1974 AMC Matador showing some of the interior trim he designedThe name recognition that he gained during these years led him to be the first designer to have licensing agreements, with his name adorning everything from luggage to nail polish, as well as a special luxurious trim package available on coupé versions of the 1974 and 1975 AMC Matador automobile.[2] "All I remember about those days are nerves, and Jackie on the phone `Hurry, hurry, Oleg, I`ve got nothing to wear`," he wrote in his 1995 book, A Thousand Days of Magic: Dressing Jacqueline Kennedy for the White House.

His designs were shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001 in its exhibit Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years, which was curated by Vogue`s European editor at large, Hamish Bowles.

Cassini`s autobiography, In My Own Fashion, was published in 1987.

His partnership with David`s Bridal was formed in the 1990s, and they had a line of his wedding dresses at the time of his death.

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