She Humiliated the Poor Maid—Until the Millionaire Chose Her Instead

She had access to everything and she   wanted almost none of it. That is the   starting point for understanding   Jacqueline Kennedy’s relationship with   luxury. She was across different periods   of her life. The wife of one of the most   politically powerful men in America and   then the wife of one of the wealthiest   men in the world.

 She had access to the   full inventory of what money and   position could acquire. She acquired a   small portion of it specifically and   deliberately  and she paid almost   no attention to the rest. The things she   actually loved were not the things her   position suggested she should love. Some   were expensive.

 Some were not expensive   at all. Some were objects she had loved   since she was 20 years old in Paris and   had never stopped wanting. The luxury   she valued was not the luxury of status   display. It was the luxury of the thing   that was exactly right. The specific   object, book, fabric,  scent, or   experience that met the standard she had   been developing since childhood for what   genuinely  good meant.

 Here are   15 of her most genuinely loved luxury   items. What they were and what the   loving of them reveals. Fact one, the   right books, not collections, but   specific volumes. She read  until   they fell apart. The books that   Jacqueline Kennedy loved were not   collected as objects of display. They   were used.

 The volumes in her personal   library at the Fifth Avenue apartment   and the Martha’s Vineyard House showed   the evidence of actual reading. The   marginal notes, the passages underlined,   the dogeared pages,  the spines   cracked from being held open for hours   across multiple readings. She returned   to specific books across years and   decades.

 The Greek tragedies that she   had read in the winter after Dallas and   had kept returning to for the rest of   her life. the specific histories and   biographies that she had been reading   since her teens and that were still   present on the shelves. With the   accumulated evidence of multiple   engagements, the poetry she had loved   since school and had never stopped   reaching for.

 She had been buying books   since childhood at whatever bookstores   were available and accessible. The book   buying did not become more elaborate   with the resources available to her in   the Onasses years or the post-   settlement years. It simply continued   the same attention to the same quality   she had always brought to it applied to   the specific book she found through the   specific process of looking and reading   and keeping what was worth keeping.

 The   most expensive book in her collection   was not necessarily the most loved. The   most loved were the one she had carried   through different periods of her life   that had been present in the difficult   years and the good ones that were worn   to the condition that genuine use   produces.

 A well-worn book in her   collection was worth more to her than a   pristine one. Fact two, specifically   made French perfume, one scent for 40   years. She wore odelvine. She wore it   from her young adult years until her   death. She wore nothing else in the   domain of fragrance, not because she was   unaware of the alternatives, but because   she had found the right thing and had   decided that replacing the right thing   with novelty, was not something she had   any interest in doing.

 The scent was   part of the total identity she had    constructed and maintained   across 40 years. The specific sensory   dimension of her presence that the   camera could not  capture, but   that the room she entered experienced.   The people who knew her and loved her   described it as one of the things that   came back most powerfully after she was   gone.

 The fragrance was the memory of   her in the way that the photographs were   not because the photographs were images   of the public self and the    fragrance was simply her. She had   encountered French perfume seriously   during her year in Paris and had arrived   at her specific choice through the same   process she arrived at every other   choice about her appearance.

 A cleareyed   assessment of what served her   specifically and a willingness to   discard  everything that was not   that the assessment had produced Lanven.   She had stayed with Lanven because the   assessment had been correct and there   was nothing to be gained from revising   what was correct.

 The consistency itself   was the luxury. 40 years of wearing the   same right thing, the discipline to find   the correct answer and keep it. Rather   than the distraction of perpetual    seeking was something most   people never managed. Fact three,   properly made French silk, she could   identify it by touch alone. The   relationship Jaclyn Kennedy had with the   specific quality of French silk, the   weight, the drape, the specific way it   moved and caught light, was the   relationship of a person who had spent   decades studying the material. as a   craftsman studies a medium. She had been   handling fine fabric since her year in   Paris, where the textile traditions of   the French couture houses were treated   as seriously as any other form of   applied intelligence. And she had   developed through years of handling   quality and handling its absence a   sensitivity to the material that was as   precise as any other form of trained   perception. She could feel the   difference between properly woven French   silk  and its various imitations.   The difference was real and it was

  significant and it expressed itself in   everything. The fabric was used for the   way it held a silhouette, the way it   moved, the way it changed across a long   evening in ways that either maintained   the garment’s quality or revealed its   inadequacy.  She specified it   when she was working with Cassini on the   White House wardrobe  and in the   private acquisitions that continued   across the following decades.

 She   specified the fabric in terms that the   designers and dress makers she worked   with understood were not negotiable. The   wrong fabric in the right silhouette was   still the wrong dress. The fabric was   not a detail. It was the substance of   the thing. The luxury was not the price.   French silk of the quality she required   was expensive.

 But the expense was the   consequence of the quality rather than   the point of it. The point was the   material itself. the specific quality of   a specific thing  done correctly,   which was what she had been seeking in   every domain since she was 20 years old.   Fact four, a properly made cup of   coffee.   She sourced it through French channels.

  The coffee that Jaclyn Kennedy drank   across her adult life was coffee she had   arranged to have at the correct quality   standard regardless of the institutional   context she was in. She had learned what   properly made coffee was in Paris, where   the specific preparation and the   specific quality of the thing were   treated as matters of genuine   importance,  and she had found   the American default inadequate by   comparison, and had arranged her   circumstances to avoid it.

 In the White   House, the official catering coffee was   not what she was drinking. The private   residence had its own coffee preparation   arranged to her specification, producing   what she considered adequate.    She had organized this not as a   statement about the institutional   standard, but as the practical   maintenance of the specific quality she   had decided was worth maintaining.

 She   kept sources for properly made coffee in   every significant domestic context she   inhabited across the following decades.    The apartment had the specific   beans and the specific equipment. The   vineyard house was provisioned   accordingly. She did not accept the   default because the default was   available.

 She arranged for what she   wanted because the alternative was   accepting inadequacy  in   something she found genuinely   pleasurable and that the effort of   maintaining at the right standard was   modest. She drank one cup in the morning   with the complete attention of someone   drinking something they had taken care   to have correctly.

 That attention was   the real luxury, the specific pleasure   of the right thing done right. Fact   five, high quality dark chocolate. She   kept it in every residence.  The   dark chocolate that Jacqueline Kennedy   maintained in her apartment across the   years of the New York life was one of   the most straightforwardly personal   luxury items in her domestic inventory.

  Not a status object, not an investment,   not a piece she had acquired through the   private channels for reasons of art   historical significance. Simply   something she loved and kept because she   loved it. She kept the specific quality   she had determined was the correct   quality.

 the high cocoa content dark   chocolate of the French tradition with a   minimum of sugar and the maximum of the   actual flavor of the thing. Not the   confectionary version that the American   culture offered in abundance, but the   version that bore the same relationship   to the confectionary version as properly   made castle bore to its American   approximation.

 The household staff in   different residences across different   decades described finding the chocolate   in the same general location across   different kitchens, not displayed, not   featured, simply present as one of the   unremarkable facts of the daily domestic   inventory.  She kept it because   she liked it.

 She kept the correct   version because she had no interest in   keeping the incorrect one. The pleasure   was specific to  the quality. The   luxury was not the price, which was   moderate. It was the specificity, the   decision to identify exactly what you   wanted and maintain access to exactly   that rather than accepting the available   approximation.

 She applied this   principle to  the chocolate the   same way she applied it to the coffee   and the silk and the fragrance. The   thing should be what it should be. She   arranged for it to be fact six. Properly   sourced French bread. She found specific   bakeries in every city. The bread that   Jacqueline Kennedy wanted was French   bread made correctly.

 And she had been   specific about this preference since her   year in Paris had established for her   permanently and precisely what bread    was when it was done right. The   specific quality of a properly made   baguette. The crust, the crumb, the   flavor that the slow fermentation   produced was the standard. And the   American default was not the standard.

  She found the bakeries that met the   standard in every domestic context she   inhabited. In New York, she identified   the specific establishments that   produced bread she considered worth    eating, and she maintained the   relationships with those bakeries that   the finding required. On Martha’s   Vineyard, she found the equivalent.

 In   Paris, she knew exactly where to go. The   finding was not casual. It required    the attention of someone who   took the quality of a daily staple   seriously enough to search for the   correct version rather than accept the   adequate one. She had decided that bread   was not a background element of the   daily food.

 It was a specific and   important thing that deserved to be what   it should be. The friends who dined with   her in the private contexts where the   bread was hers to select described the   specific quality of a meal where the   bread was genuinely good. The way it   changed everything else on the table,   the way it elevated the simplest food    by being the right accompaniment   to it.

 She had understood this from the   Paris bistros of her student year    and she had maintained the   understanding for 40 years. Fact seven,   fine writing paper. She sourced it   specifically and it was always the same   weight. The letters Jacqueline Kennedy   wrote across her adult life were written   on paper that was as specific to her as   any other element of her personal   presentation.

 Not the institutional   stationery of the offices she occupied   the White House stationary, the double   day letter head, but her personal   stationery sourced to a specific quality   standard and maintained through the   specific channels that supplied it. The   paper was the right weight, not the   flimsy paper of the commercial   stationary supply, but something with   the specific substance that a letter   written on it required that communicated    through the physical quality of   the object the seriousness with which   the writing had been undertaken.    She had felt this difference in Paris,   where the stationary departments of the   great Paris shops  treated paper   with the seriousness the French   tradition brought to every material   question, and she had maintained the   standard ever since. The people who   received her letters kept them not only   for their content, but as objects,   specific physical things that had the   quality of objects made with intention   rather than produced for    expedience. The paper was part of this.   The handwriting on the paper was part of   this. The combination of the right   material and the right words produced   something that the recipients recognized   as a different category from the

  ordinary letter. She had been choosing   the right paper since she was a young   woman who had understood that the   quality of the material expressed the   quality of the intention.  She   maintained the choice because the   understanding remained correct. Fact   eight. Antique French furniture of   specific periods.

 She could date    it across the room. The French furniture   that Jackie Kennedy had been studying,   acquiring, and living with since her   Paris year  was the most   significant category of luxury object in   her collection and the one she knew most   deeply. She had studied the field with   the seriousness of a professional.

 And   by the time she was directing the White   House restoration, she was engaging with   the curators and museum specialists. She   had assembled as a peer rather than as a   patron. She could date a piece of French   furniture from across the room, not   approximately specifically from the   proportions and the specific details of   the construction that each period and   each matra ebonist had produced.

 The   Louis the 15th pieces with their curved   lines and the specific quality of the   Ormaloo mounts. the Louis V 16th pieces   with the return to the classical   straight  line and the medallion   back. The empire period that followed   Napoleon’s taste for the monumental. She   had  studied them until the   differences were immediately legible.

  The pieces she acquired across her adult   life  were acquired with this   knowledge informing every purchase. She   was not buying antique French furniture   as a category. She was acquiring   specific pieces she had identified as   genuinely significant, correctly   attributed in condition that warranted   the acquisition.

  The luxury was   not the price, though the pieces were   expensive. The luxury was the knowledge,   the 40 years of looking and learning and   handling that had produced the specific   intelligence she brought to each   acquisition. She had  paid for   the knowledge with time rather than   money, and the knowledge was the   foundation everything else was built on.

  Fact nine. Fresh flowers in the private    rooms specifically and always.   The flowers that Jaclyn Kennedy   maintained in the private rooms of her   various residences were one of the most   consistently noted features of those   residences by the people who visited   them.

 Not the elaborate arrangements of   the official White House rooms. Those   were institutional productions managed   by the floral staff according to the   requirements of the building’s public   function. The private flowers were   different, simpler, more personal,   changed frequently,    and present in the specific rooms where   she actually lived rather than in the   rooms that were maintained for public   appearances.

 She had strong preferences   about the specific flowers.  She   favored white and cream and pale colors,   the flowers that worked with the light   and the color palette she had   established in the private spaces rather   than against them. She favored the   specific flowers that had their own   fragrance rather than those that were   purely visual.

  the gardinia, the   lily of the valley, the white tubarose,   the flowers whose presence in a room was   registered by the nose as well as the   eye. The flowers were changed before   they declined. She did not maintain   flowers past the point where they were   in their full condition. The declining   flower was not the flower she wanted in   the room.

 She had applied the same   principle to flowers that she applied to   everything in the physical environment   she inhabited. The thing should be what   it should be, and the thing that is no   longer what it should be should be   replaced by what is. The luxury was not   the cost of the flowers. It was the   specific attention to the specific   quality of the physical world around   her.

 The daily maintenance of an   environment that met the standard she   had set for what the environment should   be. Fact 10. Egyptian antiquities. She   acquired them through private    channels for decades. The Egyptian   antiquities that Jackie Kennedy had been   acquiring since the 1980s were one of   the less documented categories of her   collection and one of the most   personally significant.

 She had   developed through the sustained   scholarly engagement with Egyptian   archaeology that marked the later   decades of her life the knowledge   required to acquire in this field with   genuine intelligence rather than the   enthusiasm of a wealthy collector buying   category. She knew what she was looking   at.

 She had studied the specific   periods, the specific dynasties, the   specific materials and techniques that   the  ancient Egyptian craftsmen   had used and that the trained eye could   use to assess authenticity and   significance. She had the training   because she had done the studying and   the studying had been serious. The   pieces she acquired through the private   channels she maintained were chosen with   the specific eye of someone who had been   in the field literally on the   archaeological sites, working alongside   scholars who described her engagement as   genuine rather than performative.    She had earned the acquisitions   through the knowledge that made them   possible. The luxury was the knowledge   as much as the  objects. She had   arrived in the last decade of her life   at the collector’s fullest expression of   the practice. The knowledge so deep that   the objects were encountered on their   own terms understood in their original   context acquired because the   understanding was present rather than   despite its absence. Fact 11. The right   hotel rooms in Paris. She had specific   requirements and they never 

  changed. The Paris hotels where   Jacqueline Kennedy stayed across the   decades of her adult life were selected   with the same specificity she brought to   every other luxury choice. She knew what   she wanted. She had identified who   provided it  and she maintained   the relationship with a provider rather   than exploring alternatives that offered   no improvement over what she had already   found.

 The requirements were specific   and consistent. The view mattered. She   wanted the specific quality of Paris   light coming through the specific window   that faced the specific direction she   had determined was correct for the   specific room she was in. The silence   mattered Paris is a city of variable   acoustics and she had identified the   locations that produced the specific   quality of urban quiet that she found   restorative.

 The service was required to   understand what she needed without   requiring it to be explained repeatedly.    She had the habit shared by many   people who travel frequently to a city   they genuinely love of knowing the city   better from the specific    residential perspective of the regular   visitor than most residents know it from   the perspective of living there.

 She had   been going to Paris since she was 20 and   she had been paying attention at the   same level. She paid attention to   everything else she found worth   understanding.  The Paris hotel   room at the right quality with the right   light was one of the specific and   non-negotiable pleasures of the   returning visits. She had found it.

 She   kept it. She returned to it. Fact 12.   The Martha’s Vineyard landscape. She had   it designed like a luxury object. The   property at Gay Head on Martha’s   Vineyard that Jacquine Kennedy acquired   and built on in the 1980s was in its   relationship to the natural landscape    one of the most personally   expressive luxury items she ever   produced.

 She had always understood that   the landscape around a building was as   significant as the building itself. That   the views from the windows, the paths   through the property, the relationship   between the cultivated and the natural    were as much a part of the   designed environment as anything inside   the structure.

 She worked with the   landscape designer on the vineyard   property  with the same quality   of informed direction she brought to   every other design collaboration. The   specific orientation of the planting   relative  to the sea views, the   specific quality of the path that led   from the house to the water. The   relationship between the built   environment and the landscape it   occupied not the landscape shaped   entirely to human use but the landscape   engaged with in the way that respects   what it already is while making room for   what the human use  requires. She   swam from the property, walked it, rode   horses in the surrounding land. The   landscape was not background to the   house. The house was the shelter from   which the landscape was engaged with.   She had designed the relationship   between the two as deliberately as she   had designed anything in her life. And   the result was the physical environment   she had been working toward since she   first understood in Paris at 20. That   the world you live in is either   expressing who you are or it is not. The   vineyard landscape expressed exactly who   she was. Fact 13. Cashmere of the

  specific quality she had found in   Scotland. She ordered it directly.    Among the specific material   luxuries that Jacquine Kennedy   maintained across the decades of the   post-W White House life, the cashmere   she wore in the private and informal   contexts, the sweaters and the wraps she   wore at the vineyard in the autumn.

 The   pieces she had for the private evenings   was cashmere of the specific quality   that she had identified as the correct    quality and that she sourced   through the specific channels she had   found, provided it. Scottish Kashmere   from the specific mills she had   identified in the specific weights she   found most useful in the colors she   actually wore the pale neutrals and the   occasional soft color that worked within   the palette she had  maintained   since the White House years.

 She ordered   directly when the relationship she had   established permitted direct ordering or   through the London and New York channels   that served as intermediaries for the   specific establishments she preferred.   The luxury was the material itself.   Kashmir done correctly. The specific   softness, the specific warmth, the   specific way it maintained its quality   across years of wearing and washing when   the quality was genuinely there to begin   with was one of the physical    pleasures she had been maintaining since   she could afford to maintain it. She   wore the pieces until they wore out. The   wearing out took years when the quality   was what she  required. The long   life of the well-made piece was its own   form of luxury. The pleasure extended   across time rather than consumed quickly   and  replaced. Fact 14.   Long uninterrupted hours with a book.   She treated this as a luxury she fought   for. Among the items on the list of   things Jacqueline  Kennedy   genuinely valued and actively maintained   in her life. One was not an object at

  all. It was the long uninterrupted hour   or 2 hours or three with a book she was   deeply engaged in  in a place   where nothing was required of her and   the reading was the only thing   happening. She fought for this. The   White House years had been the period of   her life when it  was most   difficult to find and most necessary to   have.

 And she had built it into the   daily structure wherever the structure   permitted. The early mornings before the    official schedule began, the   late nights after the state dinners, the   quiet weekends at Glenn Ora. She had   protected the reading time with the same   force she protected every other private   necessity.

 After the White House years,   the fight became easier as the official   obligations reduced. But the specific   luxury of the long uninterrupted reading   hour was something she continued to   actively protect rather than simply   enjoy. She declined social invitations   that would have consumed the reading   time when the invitation was not worth   the cost.

 She organized the daily   schedule around the preservation of the   space for it. She said late in her life   that the hours she had spent reading   across her adult life were among the   best hours she had lived. She meant it   as a plain description of experience    rather than as a preference   statement.

 The reading was where a   significant portion of who she actually   was had been formed and was continuing   to be formed. The hours for it were the   most personal luxury she maintained.    Fact 15. The private table, a   well-made simple meal with one or two   people she actually loved. Every luxury   on this list was genuinely hers.

  Specifically chosen, specifically   valued, maintained across decades for   reasons that were accurate to her actual   character rather than performed for any    audience. The most personal of   all of them was not an object. It was   the private table. The dinner for two or   three people she genuinely wanted to be   with in the apartment  or on the   vineyard where the food was simple and   good and no one was performing and the   conversation was what it actually was   rather than what the occasion required   it to be.  She had given   thousands of meals in her adult life.   The state dinners and the diplomatic   lunchons and the official functions had   been among the finest official meals   served in the second half of the 20th   century. They were professional events.    They were not what she valued.   What she valued was the small table. The   meal she had not organized as a   diplomatic event, but as an expression   of the specific pleasure she took in the   company of the people she actually   loved.  The French onion soup   when she wanted French onion soup. the   hamburger if that was what the evening   required, the good bread and the good   wine, and the conversation that was

  possible only with the specific people   she had let close enough to have it   with. She had organized her life in the   decades after Dallas toward the   increasing presence of the private table   and the decreasing presence of   everything else. The private table was   what the life was for. Everything    else, the beautiful clothes, the   right fragrance, the correct paper, the   vineyard house designed toward the water   was the frame.

 The dinner with one or   two people she loved was the painting.   If this video gave you something to   think about, leave a like and subscribe.   There is always more to the story.   There’s always more to the story.   There’s always more to the story. is   all.