Oleg Cassini (April 11, 1913 – March 17, 2006) was an American
fashion designer noted for being chosen by Jacqueline Kennedy to design her state wardrobe in the 1960s. His clothing designs also
appeared in numerous Hollywood films starring his second wife, the
actress Gene Tierney.
Early life
Born in Paris as Oleg Cassini Loiewski, the elder son of Countess
Marguerite Cassini and her husband, Alexander Loiewski, he was raised in Italy and moved to the
United States in 1936. His father was a Russian diplomat,
and his maternal grandfather, Arthur Paul Nicholas Cassini, Marquis de Capuzzuchi di Bologna, Count Cassini, was the Russian
ambassador to the United States during the administrations of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.
His father later adopted his wife's surname, which they deemed more distinguished, and when the family lost its status and
fortune in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the Cassinis moved to Italy,
where Marguerite Cassini went to work as a fashion designer.
Cassini took American citizenship and became a second lieutenant in the
Army during World War II, at Fort Riley, Kansas. Initially, he joined the United States Coast Guard but according to his The New
York Times obituary, he later served in the U.S. Army as a cavalry officer because he found the idea of cavalry service a
bit more glamorous.
His brother, Igor Cassini, became a famous gossip
columnist known as "Cholly Knickerbocker".
Career
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 The Razor's Edge (1946); The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947); That Wonderful Urge (1948); Whrilpool (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..
[5]
Cassini in the 1974
AMC Matador showing some of the interior trim he designed
The 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.[1] "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.
First marriage
On September 2, 1938, in Elkton, Maryland -- a Russian
Orthodox ceremony took place in New York City on September 16 -- Cassini became the fourth husband of Mary "Merry" Fahrney, a daughter of Chicago industrialist Emory Homer Fahrney and his wife, the former Marion L. Hills. She was
an heiress to the Dr. Peter Fahrney & Sons patent medicine fortune. In addition to
having a small role in the 1934 motion picture Cleopatra, which was
directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starred Claudette
Colbert, Merry Fahrney was an aviator and parachutist frequently known in gossip columns as Madcap Merry. She had
previously been married to and divorced from (1) Hugh Parker Pickering, by whom she had a son, Peter, who was adopted at 15
months of age by his maternal grandparents and given the surname Fahrney; (2) Frank Van Sands Eizsner; and (3) Baron Arturo
Berlingieri, to whom she was married from July 31, 1937 until
February 3, 1938.
According to Cassini's memoirs, it was on his honeymoon when he realized that he had been married, apparently, for reasons
other than heartfelt affection. He recalled that his new bride "smoked cigarettes one after another with the casual arrogance of
the carnally satisfied. I was just another scalp." However, considering Fahrney's wealth and Cassini's lack of it, the decision
to wed likely was deemed mutually beneficial, whatever the groom's belated regrets.
Nearly two months after Fahrney and Cassini married, on October 26, her divorce from
Berlingieri was reversed on appeal. The Illinois Appellate Court declared the divorce invalid on the grounds that the former
Baroness Berlingieri's claim of being beaten up four times on her honeymoon was unproven, that she had not established beyond
doubt that the baron tried to extort US$200,000 from her, and that as she was an Italian citizen by marriage, the Chicago court
had no jurisdiction. The divorce, however, was soon resolved in her favor. [2]
Fahrney's divorce from Cassini, which was granted on February 5 1940, was equally dramatic. She won her case by proving "marital misconduct" on her husband's part, stemming from
evidence presented that Cassini had been in the company of "a scantily clad young woman" in his apartment in the Hotel Lowell in
New York City. Curiously, however, Fahrney and her first husband, Hugh Pickering, were reported to have been in an adjoining room
with an automobile salesman, spying on the couple. Cassini, for his part, denied he had been unfaithful and attempted to prove
that his wife had had extramarital affairs, presenting testimony from his cook and the couple's former butler, who claimed that
Merry Cassini had been caught in compromising circumstances on three occasions. Cassini also declared that his wife had bought
clothes for another man, socialite La Grand Griswold. (Griswold, for his part, testified that he had asked Merry Cassini to be
his wife, but that she had refused, saying that she already had a husband.) In handing down the divorce decree in Merry Cassini's
favor, the judge declared the defendant's claims of wifely adultery were "unworthy of belief." [3]
In 1941, Merry Fahrney married her fifth husband, a Swede, whom she divorced the same year. In 1944, she married her sixth
husband, Carlos Ojeda, Jr., a son of the Mexican ambassador to Argentina. [4]
Second marriage
Cassini's second wife was the American movie star Gene Tierney (1920 - 1991), whom he married on July 11,
1941. The Cassinis had two daughters, Antoinette Daria Cassini (born October 15, 1943), who was born mentally retarded, due to her mother's bout
during pregnancy with German measles, and Christina "Tina" Cassini (born November 19, 1948). Cassini in interviews and his autobiography felt that
Agathe Christie used the real life tragedy of his and Tierneys as the basis of her plot
for The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. As related in Tierney's
autobiography (Self-Portrait. New York: Wyden,1979, but well publicized for years previously) in June 1943, while pregnant with
her first child, Tierney came down with the German measles, contracted during her only appearance at the Hollywood Canteen. The baby, Daria, was born prematurely, weighing only 3 pounds and 2 ounces, and
requiring a total blood transfusion. The infant was also deaf, partially blind with cataracts, was severely retarded and
ultimately had to be institutionalized. Some time after, Tierney learned from a fan who approached at her a garden party for a
autograph that the women, who had been a member of the women's branch of the Marine Corps, had sneaked out of quarantine while
sick with the German measles to meet her at her only Hollywood Canteen appearance. This incident, as well as the circumstances
under which the information is imparted to the actress, is repeated almost verbatim in the story.
Fraught with problems that included Tierney's serious depression after the birth of the couple's daughter with disabilities,
Cassini's marriage was short but volatile. Both husband and wife had extramarital relationships, with Tierney's (while separated
from Cassini) including romances with John F. Kennedy and Tyrone Power. Tierney won an uncontested divorce in California that year; the action was
withdrawn since the couple reconciled before the divorce was made final. However, another divorce action was filed in
Los Angeles, California on February 28,
1952, with Tierney declaring that her husband cared more about his tennis game than his wife; the
final decree was granted on April 8, 1953. She was romanced and
engaged to the Prince Aly Khan after her divorce. Their engagement was strongly opposed
by the Prince's father the Aga Khan. Soon after Tierney broke off their engagement. After a
series of emotional set backs, she married oil baron W.Howard Smith in 1960 and was happily married until his death in 1981.
After his divorce from Tierney, Cassini was, for a brief period of time, unofficially engaged to the actress Grace Kelly.
Cassini and Tierney remain life long friends, Cassini has been quoted "Gene is the luckiest, unlucky girl in the world", all
of her dreams came true, at a cost.
Death
He died from complications of a stroke in Manhasset, New
York at 92 years of age. He was survived by his third wife, Marianne, his two children, and four grandchildren. He was
predeceased by his brother Igor Cassini. At the time of his death, Cassini lived in a Manhattan townhouse and a house in the
Town of Oyster Bay, New York, whose property once had been part of the
estate of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Books authored
- Cassini, Oleg (1987). In My Own Fashion: An Autobiography. Simon &
Schuster. ISBN 0-671626-40-X.
- Cassini, Oleg (1995). A Thousand Days of Magic: Dressing Jacqueline Kennedy
for the White House. Rizzoli International Publications. ISBN 0-847819-00-0.
References
- Tierney, Gene (1979).
Self-Portrait. Peter Wyden. ISBN 0-883261-52-9.
- "Revokes Fahrney Divorce: Illinois Court Acts in the Case of Woman Rewed Here," The New York Times, 27 October 1938, page 12.
- "Testifies Against Count: Former Merry Fahrney Tells of Seeing Husband in Hotel," The New York Times, 30 January 1940, page 3; "Countess Heard in Suit: Heiress Denies She Bought
Clothes for Another Man," The New York Times, 31 January 1940,
page 12; "Cassini Divorce Weighed: Two Maids of Countess Heard as Testimony Is Completed," The New York Times, 1 February 1940, page 19.
- According to the Los Angeles Times, 18 March
2006, Merry Fahrney was married and divorced nine times. Cassini's obituary in Fashion Wire Daily, however, stated that Fahrney was married and divorced eight times.
- Horwell, Veronica, "Oleg Cassini," The Guardian, 20
March 2006.
External links
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