So beautiful, so terrible: Academy of Natural Sciences on the ecology of fashion

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When first lady Jackie Kennedy traveled to India in 1962 with her husband Jack, she wore a leopard-skin coat designed by Oleg Cassini. She looked really good in it.

Kennedy’s image created a shopping frenzy. Everybody wanted that coat. The new exhibition at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, “The Ecology of Fashion,” does not have the original coat, but it has a similar one custom-tailored at the time for one of her admirers. It was later donated to Drexel’s Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection.

“The donor’s mother went to a furrier and said, ‘Make me the same coat,” said Clare Sauro, director of the collection. “The only difference is it only has four buttons while Jackie’s had six, because Jackie was taller.”

Kennedy’s leopard coat came with a heavy cost: Because of the extraordinary popular demand for the garment, it is estimated that 250,000 leopards were killed for their skins, driving the species nearly to extinction. Cassini deeply regretted his creation and spent much of his remaining career advocating for faux furs.

In the exhibition, Sauro put the real leopard fur coat next to an example of a faux fur made from synthetic fibers, likely an acrylic blend.