The day of President Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, Jackie Kennedy was glowing in a pink dress suit, and even after her husband was shot, the First Lady refused to take off the blood-stained ensemble at the hospital in Dallas and during her flight back home to Washington, D.C. with his body.
While museums have many of Jackie Kennedy's jewelry, gowns and hats on display, the now-iconic pink suit will not be available for public view for another 90 years.
Nicole Mary Kelby, author of the novel "The Pink Suit", which will be released by Little & Brown in April, recently spoke with the Detroit Free Press on the subject of the suit that until 2103, will only exist in photographs and memory.
"Even those of us who were not born when Kennedy was president are not immune to the horrific image of that perfect woman in that perfectly beautiful suit covered in blood," Kelby told the newspaper. "Jackie was a professional photographer. She painted. She designed clothes. She had an artist's eye, and used the media to craft a vision of American perfection that we'd never seen before and have rarely seen since."
While it is often referred to as "Jackie's Chanel suit," the pink suit is actually an authorized replica designed in 1961 by Chez Ninon, a New York couture house, according to Kelby. President John F. Kennedy told reporters at the time that his wife looked "smashing" in the suit, which is currently in the National Archives building in Maryland.
"During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Mrs. Kennedy was forced to take over the president's diplomatic duties, something she never did," Kelby said, "and (she) wore it twice in a week - which was quite telling of the stress she was under. The next time she wore it was in Dallas."
After trying to get out of the presidential limo the morning of Nov. 22 in Fort Worth, Jackie Kennedy told aides that she refused to get out of the suit, which she continued wearing during the emergency swearing in of President Johnson and during her flight home following the tragedy.
"Her remark, I think she made it more than once is, 'No, I'm going to leave these clothes on. I want them to see what they have done,'" author Philip Shenon said to CNN.
The Kennedy family will be consulted before an attempt is made to display the suit to the public, as they want to avoid sensationalizing the assassination.
