bouffant diplomacy

[excerpt]--------------- For a brief time, before the 1960s really began with the president's death and the rise of the hippie and drug cultures, there was now, with Jackie [Kennedy]'s patrician bearing, a heady sense of class in American life. For a brief time, Americans knew that their First Family, thanks to their First Lady, could be favorably compared with British royals and French diplomats.

Jackie conformed to no set standard; indeed, she broke the public mold of what had come to characterize the ideally desirable American woman. The buxom blonde had been America's fantasy in the 1940s and 1950s, but here was a tall, almost flat-chested brunette whose features were slightly out of proportion. She rode horses; she discussed classical history, music and French novels. And none of this was mere tokenism: she read voraciously with astonishing retention.

...Jackie had, according to Mrs. Gerald Ford, "such marvelous taste that all women in Washington, all the women across the country, copied her. We wore the same things she wore, the little pillbox on the head, the sleeveless shift. It was epidemic, that wardrobe." In no time, the famous and the unknown imitated the Jackie look, from Mary Tyler Moore's television character on The Dick Van Dyke Show, with her Jackie-like hair, pants and flat shoes, to advertising and fashion mannequins.

...Never was she more of a star than during her first international tours with Jack in the spring of 1961. But before their journey together to Canada, Paris and Vienna, she insisted that the president do his homework. "She helped him very much to understand France," said Hervé Alphand, that country's ambassador to the United States. "She asked him to read the memoirs of General de Gaulle," whom they were about to meet.

...Letitia Baldrige added that Jackie wrote letters to de Gaulle in advance of her arrival in Paris -- letters about French art and culture and about her family's French background. ...She worked out, in discussions with the president, her own type of diplomacy, which appeared not to be diplomacy at all.

The tour began in Canada in May, where the president met with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker....Both Canadian and American reporters, however, were more interested in Jackie, as even the Canadian Speaker of the Senate acknowledged in Parliament: "Her charm, beauty, vivacity and grace of mind have captured our hearts."

...Immediately before her arrival in Paris, Jackie read Marcus Cheke's exhaustive biography of Cardinal de Bernis, an aristocratic diplomat in eighteenth-century France who was also in the entourage of Madame de Pompadour. On behalf of Louis XV, this powerful churchman helped negotiate a treaty at Versailles between France and Austria.

...Aware that no stray thread or hair, no tiny flaw in hair or hemline would escape the French press, she had prepared her wardrobe to precise specifications and had sent ahead a lock of her hair to Alexandre, the city's leading hairdresser.

..."Paris simply went wild about her -- she was the topic of conversation," according to journalist Gwen Gibson.

...On that first day in Paris, Jackie completely overwhelmed General de Gaulle during an official luncheon at the Palais de l'Elysée. After chattering away with her in French about Louis XIV, the Bourbons and the geography of France, he turned to President Kennedy: "Your wife knows more French history than most Frenchwomen!" With that, according to Kenneth O'Donnell, "de Gaulle turned back to Jackie and did not take his eyes off her for the rest of the meal."
...de Gaulle later described her as "dazzling and cultivated"....

At the formal banquet, held at Versailles, Jackie continued to undergo an unmistakable transformation in the eyes of Europe. ...Glittering in a Givenchy gown, her bouffant hairdo patterned by Alexandre after a Louis XIV favorite, the Duchesse de Fontanges...Here, she dared to wear a diamond tiara -- a touch that would have been entirely inappropriate on the head of any other woman who was not a legitimate European royal. Elle s'en tient was the general reaction: "She can get away with it."

...At the Jeu de Paume she viewed the great collection of Impressionist masterworks..her favorite was Manet's Olympia...She loved, too, her visit to Malmaison, the Empress Josephine's country retreat. From there, she went to La Celle de St. Cloud, the hideaway of Madame de Pompadour.

...For her tours of the Louvre, Versailles and Malmaison, André Malraux, the Minister of State for Cultural Affairs, escorted Mrs. Kennedy. ...She formed an instant friendship with this highly cultivated man. Later he shipped the Mona Lisa on special loan to America's National Gallery, as a tribute to the First Lady. ...

The effect of this portion of her journey was felt as soon as she returned to Washington. Inspired by the state dinner at Versailles, Jackie decided to host the formal dinner for Mohammed Ayub Khan, the president of Pakistan, that July at Mount Vernon, with historic costumes, fireworks, marching bands -- all of it as unprecedented as the tiara. At the same time, she approached John A. Carver Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Public Land Managemenet. "Jackie wanted the public monuments illuminated," he recalled, "but the Department of Parks didn't want a French son et lumiére, and Jackie was frustrated" over the failure of her plan to bring a touch of Paris to Washington. After her tenure, the idea was eventually implemented.
------------------------------- [end excerpt]
{Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life,
by Donald Spoto. Copyright 2000. St. Martin's
Press, New York, N.Y.}

I love picturing all that -- I really got interested in reading about this trip (and others) not because of the historical value and perspective on modern diplomacy, but -- initially -- to find out about the "fairy princess" dresses that Mrs. Kennedy wore. (Heavy intellectual challenges...! To heck with Khrushchev, I want to understand the Givenchy!!)

And I really like the last sentence quoted above, and its meanings & implications: "After her tenure, the idea was eventually implemented."
Here she encountered frustration -- and a person does get frustrated when they're all in a whirl of enthusiasm, and then they run up against some stodgy bureaucrat who isn't on board -- 'Fe fi fo fum, what's all this French influence and nonsense...that -- er -- wasn't OUR idea...we're not havin' any FRENCH stuff...rahr rar, rehr...' -- but then later -- "the idea was eventually implemented"... : )

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