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Curators cannot think of another historical garment imbued with more meaning, and also deemed too sensitive to be shown. Among items of apparel with similar resonance are garments worn in concentration camps and the tatters that remained after the atomic blasts in Japan. But these objects, while deeply affecting, are displayed in museums. Other examples mentioned by curators include Napoleon’s death coat, a shoe dropped by Marie Antoinette on the way to the guillotine and the suit and cloak Abraham Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated. Mrs. Lincoln gave these items to a family friend. That man’s family kept them until the 1950s, when the American Trucking Association raised money to buy and donate them to the government. Since the ’60s, they have been on display at Ford’s Theater, though the cloak was put away because of wear.

But when Lincoln was alive, relatively few Americans knew what he looked like. Besides, his image, even if it had been familiar, would hardly have compared to Mrs. Kennedy’s riveting beauty and pop culture celebrity. She was, as Norman Mailer said in a 1962 essay critical of her televised tour of the White House, “an institution being put together before our eyes.”

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/fashion/jacqueline-kennedys-smart-pink-suit-preserved-in-memory-and-kept-out-of-view.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=todayspaper