"Not many people know how physically wearing such a campaign can be. Some mornings you're up at seven, and you visit a dozen towns during the day. You shake hundreds of hands in the afternoon and hundreds more at night. You get so tired you catch yourself laughing and crying at the same time. But you pace yourself and you get through it. You just look at it as something you have to do. You knew it would come and you knew it was worth it." -Jacqueline Kennedy on the 1960 Presidential Campaign.
The Campaign section of the exhibition highlights the clothing Jacqueline Kennedy wore while on the campaign trail, her "official" wardrobe. This knit suit in asparagus green wool jersy with ivory linen trim, ca. 1959 was worn by Jacqueline Kennedy for a Jacques Lowe photographic sitting at her Georgetown home in Washington D.C. in the spring of 1959. This French suit (designer unkown) reflects her preference for unfitted clothing.
Hubert de Givench (French, born 1927) designed this fuschia dress in silk shantung with ruffle in the spring-summer 1958. Mrs. Kennedy wore this dress in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts in 1959 for a photographic sitting with her husband and daughter Caroline; a family portrait from this session would become the Kennedys' Christmas card later that year. Jacques Lowe, the photographer for this session, later joined the presidential campaign as the official photographer.
Life magazine covering the 1960 Presidential campaign wrote of Jackie "the candidate's stiking wife Jackie, who sticks close to her husband, has attracted almost as much attention as he has. Women crane to see what she is wearing. Voters of both sexes bombard her with questions, many of them curiously unpolitical..."
Bob Bugnand (French, born 1924) designed this suit in black and white houndstooth wool tweed with black trim specifically for the Presidential campaign. Influenced by Chanel's postwar suit, Bugnand combined a cardigan jacket edged in braided trim with a "easy to wear" A line skirt.
Herbert de Givency, for Givenchy Boutique (French established 1952) created this dress and overblouse in slate gray wool jersey ca. 1959.
To view more campaign clothing see 
slide show.