Oleg Cassini — fashion designer with roots in the Russian Empire
He was born Oleg Loiewski in Paris in April 1913, the elder son of Count Alexander Loiewski, a Russian diplomat, and Countess Marguerite Cassini. Both sides carried titles. His maternal grandfather, Count Arthur Cassini, Marquis de Capuzzuchi di Bologna, had been the Russian Empire's minister to China and then its ambassador to the United States under McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt - and his mother, as a young woman, had been her widowed father's official hostess in Washington, a fixture of turn-of-the-century capital society. His younger brother Igor was born in Sevastopol.
The revolution took all of it. The Loiewski properties were seized, the family's fortune went with them, and they left Russia in 1917. They dropped the Russian surname and settled in Florence, where his mother opened a dress shop selling versions of the newest French fashions. Her clients were European aristocracy and wealthy Americans, a good many of whom she had known during her Washington years - the one asset the revolution had not been able to confiscate.
That shop was where her son learned the trade. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, made his first garments in his mother's salon in the early 1930s, set up his own dressmaking business in Rome, and in 1936 emigrated with Igor to the United States. He took his mother's name.
Paramount Pictures hired him as a costume designer and he built a reputation dressing film stars; he became an American citizen and served as an army officer during the war. He married the actress Gene Tierney and was later engaged to Grace Kelly. The fashion establishment regarded him as a society figure rather than a serious designer.
In 1960 Jacqueline Kennedy, who had always dressed in French couture, decided that a First Lady should be dressed by an American, and chose him as her exclusive couturier. He held the position through the whole of the Kennedy presidency and was called her secretary of style. What he produced - the sheath dresses, the A-line skirts, the pillbox hats - became the most copied look of the decade and remains the visual shorthand for the period.
He worked for another forty years, wrote a memoir in 1987, and died on Long Island in 2006, aged ninety-two.
The circle it closes is a peculiar one. His mother entered the White House circle in the 1900s as the daughter of the tsar's ambassador. Two generations later, and with none of the money left, her son returned to it as the person who dressed the President's wife.
"Family left Russia in 1917 for Florence; he emigrated to the United States in 1936"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Paris (Rus Diplomat)
The family's properties were seized after 1917 and they left Russia, dropping the Russian surname and settling in Florence, where his mother opened a dress shop. He took her name. He emigrated to the United States in 1936.
Born Oleg Loiewski in Paris to Count Alexander Loiewski, a Russian diplomat, and Countess Marguerite Cassini, daughter of Count Arthur Cassini - the Russian Empire's minister to China and ambassador to the United States under McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. His younger brother Igor was born in Sevastopol.
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Paris (Rus Diplomat). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.