Jacqueline Kennedy’s style is the definition of timeless, all-American elegance. It features clean lines, tailored skirt suits, shift dresses, and a minimalist, sophisticated palette. Her look evolved from 1960s formal White House chic to relaxed 1970s street style. Of even more interest to me is her classic riding outfits, which featured traditional English and American equestrian gear, including tailored dark riding jackets, crisp white shirts, slim-fitting beige or light breeches, dark ties, and polished knee-high leather riding boots. She also famously wore a traditional Andalusian picador-style jacket and wide-brimmed hat at the Seville Fair in Spain.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis shared a lifelong love for horses and regularly rode with the prestigious Orange County Hunt in the Virginia Piedmont region around Middleburg. We have hunted in Virginia and Orange County Hunt is widely regarded as the best and also the most posh hunt in or around Middleburg. It is beautiful hunt country and the hunt has longstanding ties to the community. Many people say that the hunts around Middleburg are the community itself, in this pocket of the U.S., where foxhunting lives and breathes as part of the fabric of life there.
During her time as First Lady, her passion for foxhunting served as a private escape from Washington politics. Jackie leased a refuge from Washington, with a 400-acre estate Glen Ora in Middleburg, Virginia, turning it into a weekend capital and equestrian haven. She rode frequently with the Orange County Hunt, one of the oldest foxhunting groups in the United States. After her lease at Glen Ora ended, she and President John F. Kennedy built their own nearby estate named Wexford in the heart of hunt country. Her trainer trailered her and the children to the hunts and many horses shows and events.
In The Private Passion of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Vicky Moon illuminates just how vital a role horses played throughout Jackie’s often tumultuous life. Jackie’s mother propped her up on a horse when she was just a year old, and throughout her childhood Jackie turned to her pony Buddy to distract her from the stress of her parents’ precarious marriage. As a woman struggling under the intense pressures of her role as First Lady, riding a horse through the countryside was a much-needed tonic. And later in her life, as a mourning widow and then a reluctant celebrity, riding offered Jackie peace and privacy. Whether cantering up and down the emerald hills of Ireland, galloping through the woods in New Jersey, racing cross-country, or taking long, quiet rides with her children down the dirt trails of Virginia’s hunt country, Jackie’s lifelong passion for horses was a mainstay during difficult years, a refuge from a life in the limelight, and a constant source of joy. Now, in addition to the elegant, stunning images from every stage of her life — photographs taken while out riding to the hounds, at the steeplechase with Jack, with Caroline on her pony — Jackie’s story unfolds through Moon’s fresh and engaging narrative, sprinkled with anecdotes and memories from those who knew Jackie not only as one of the most admired women in the world, but simply as a graceful and talented horsewoman.
And, her style, particularly her riding style remains timeless. Especially in the world of foxhunting, where styles rarely change and if they do it is by inches and not by miles.
