The Tiny Dent in Jackie Kennedy's Hat That Helped Make Halston Famous
By Alexus Mosley
Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives / Robert L. Knudsen (White House Photographs).
A fashion icon was born with a little help from the wind. When Jacqueline Kennedy stepped out for her husband’s inauguration on January 20, 1961, she wore an elegant beige coat by Oleg Cassini and a petite pillbox hat by a then-28-year-old Halston, Bergdorf Goodman’s resident milliner. The hat was simple, sculptural, and perfectly suited to the new First Lady’s modern image. It also had a dent. And, as fashion stories go, the dent is where things get interesting.
According to Halston, the hat had been made too small for Jackie. When a gust of wind threatened to send it flying, she grabbed onto it, accidentally leaving an indentation in the top. She wore it that way for the inauguration. Seventh Avenue manufacturers reproduced the pillbox by the thousands — dent included. Halston later joked that they copied the design so faithfully that every imitation came with the same accidental imperfection. Jackie Kennedy had accidentally given American fashion a trend.
Photo Credit: Associated Press (AP)
Halston’s success wasn’t exactly an overnight Cinderella story. He had been making hats since he was young, reportedly designing them for his mother and sister before studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and starting his professional millinery career there.
He moved to New York in the late 1950s, first working for celebrated milliner Lilly Daché before becoming Bergdorf Goodman’s head milliner in 1959. There, he found himself designing for some of the most fashionable women in New York, building the connections that would eventually give him national visibility.
In 1966, he designed his first ready-to-wear collection for Bergdorf Goodman. After two years, he left the department store and established his own company, expanding his vision into the sleek, sensual womenswear that would eventually make him one of the defining designers of 1970s America.
Before Bianca Jagger was his muse and Studio 54 was his runway, and all that effortless American glamour, there was a slightly too-small hat, a gust of wind, and an accidental dent.