Oleg Cassini, the Russian nobleman who went on to fame as a successful couturier, died on Friday on Long Island. He was 92.
Though Cassini’s career covered some seven decades, he achieved his greatest fame as the official wardrobe designer for Jacqueline Kennedy when she was first lady of the country. He also designed clothes for Joan Fontaine, Joan Crawford and other Hollywood stars and women of wealth.
He was also aggressive about spreading his name throughout the apparel world, couture and otherwise. His signature was available, under license, to the makers of women’s hosiery, hats, shoes, gloves, girdles, jewelry, furs, swimsuits, sportswear and sunglasses. And his name was also on slacks, neckties, underwear, belts and sweaters for men. He even marketed linens for the bathroom and bedroom.
Oleg Loiewski Cassini was born on April 11, 1913, the son of Marguerite Cassini, an Italian countess, and Alexander Loiewski, a Russian diplomat descended from a long line of Eastern European nobles. The family was living in Copenhagen when Oleg was born in a Paris hospital; his father was then first secretary of the Russian Embassy in Denmark. But after the revolution of 1917, the family settled in Florence, Italy, where Cassini’s mother began working for the Countess Fabricotti, who owned a fashion salon.
Cassini loved to sketch, and his mother started sending him to Paris, where he sketched the French fashions before returning to Italy. He took drawing lessons at the Academia Belle Arte in Florence, studied under the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico, and won five first prizes in 1934 at an international fashion competition in Turin.
In 1936, during the Depression, Cassini left Florence for New York, finding work as a junior designer. In the late 1930s, he moved to Hollywood and went to work at Paramount Pictures, where he was paid $250 a week to design wardrobes for the stars of B movies, including a sarong for Dorothy Lamour. He was also married to actress Gene Tierney.
In 1960, Jacqueline Kennedy named Cassini her principal designer. Cassini later said he had thought a great deal about her. He spoke of her “sphinx-like quality and her eyes, which were classically, very beautifully set.”
After the Kennedy years, Cassini turned his attention to other ventures, introducing men’s pink undershorts and dress shirts the color of raspberries. Over the years, he claimed primary credit for introducing the Nehru jacket to Americans, watching it wax and wane. He developed a line of men’s suits named after Johnny Carson, and watched that market wax and wane, too. In his autobiography, “In My Own Fashion,” he also said he created the Grace Kelly look. He said he designed dresses for Kelly, one of America’s most beautiful actresses, that set off her patrician good looks. He also began a relationship with her and desperately wanted to marry her. He was certain she wanted to marry him, despite the reservations of her lace-curtain Philadelphia Irish family. But in the end, she agreed to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco.
In the fall of 2001, he introduced Oleg Cassini Sport, a collection of silk warm-up suits, satin-lined hooded tops and abbreviated dresses, some of them loosely based on his design archives of the 1960s. Part of a licensing partnership with Rousso Apparel group, the collection was followed by Oleg Cassini Weekend, a clothing line designed for travel. He also maintained a highly successful bridal business. Those ventures, and more than 40 other licensees, earned Cassini the distinction of being the oldest living designer in America, and perhaps the world.