Having a look at JFK’s 1961 inauguration speech (pictured above), Jackie Kennedy very clearly stands out to JFK’s right (our left) because of the comparative brightness and simple texture of her clothing. Plus, she’s wearing her famous pillbox hat. At first glance, some readers still might see a tinge of blue in the dress, possibly because of the shadow cast on her form. But in reality, her dress was a dark cream — “fawnish beige,” as CNN fancifully puts it, aka, the color of a fawn.
In general, Kennedy was pictured in so many different bold, solid-color outfits over the years that confusion about what she wore and when is understandable. Bur remember that such pictures come from a time of infinitely fewer camera phones hanging around in people’s pockets. They also come from a time of far fewer sources from which to view events and learn news. Bearing this in mind, it makes sense that particular images of prominent events got shared around and left a collective impression in the memory of the public. Hence the additional influence of a picture from Life Magazine, as CNN mentions.
[Featured image by CWO Donald Mingfield, USA via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled]
