Frances Cleveland was an avid knitter and led the national organization, The Needlework Guild, as its president for nearly twenty years. When her son, Richard, defended Whitaker Chambers in court, Frances sat in the visitors’ section and knit during the trial. Ida McKinley, who tragically lost both of her children before they reached adulthood, spent hours knitting booties and children’s clothing items to be given to her friends’ children. Edith Roosevelt, a close friend of Frances’s, was also a member of the Guild, but she was not quite as ambitious as her predecessor. Edith was only president of her local chapter. Florence Harding, as a senator’s wife, joined with the army of knitters who made socks, pajamas, and caps for the soldiers fighting in World War I. Grace Coolidge was an avid knitter, and even contributed patterns to women’s magazines. 
Call her tainted by her husband’s legacy. Or forgotten because she seemed to be the shy, retiring type. But during her five years and eight months in the White House, Pat Nixon exhibited a sense of style that helped American women feel good about themselves.
In 1972, at the age of 60, she was the cover model for Ladies’ Home Journal. She wore red embroidered kimono-style dress for the cover shot. There were plenty of belted outfits on the fashion spread inside the magazine, too. And even though she was nearly always seen in public wearing a dress or a skirt (rumor was that Richard Nixon did not like women in pants), she modeled several stylish pants suits in the spread. In the era of the mini-skirt, she wore her dresses just above the knee, but she maintained a tailored look that conveyed a stylish conservatism that was in keeping with her image.
One thing Pat was not conservative about was color. She wore a varied palette of vivid hues – pinks, turquoises, deep blues, yellows, and greens. She had a complexion that allowed her to wear a variety of colors across the warm/cool spectrum, all of which looked good on her.
In the summer of 2014, I had the privilege of seeing Pat Nixon’s 1969 inaugural gown when it was on display as part of a special exhibit at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum (in West Branch, Iowa). The gown was a standout among many standouts. Made of silk satin in a vivid mimosa yellow, the gown’s long-sleeved waist length jacket was embroidered in gold and silver metallic thread and encrusted with turquoise, purple and silver Austrian crystals. The designer was Karen Stark of Harvey Berin, an American couturier noted for adapting French fashions to American tastes. Stark had also been a favorite of Lady Bird Johnson.
Pat Nixon’s choice of color also conveyed her own sense of purpose: Yellow is a color that is considered unifying, and she was, although many do not realize this, one who worked to bring people together.
My father would be delighted to know that I’ve started paying closer attention to professional basketball and football. I’ve been a baseball fan for years (I’ve temporarily transferred my loyalties to the Mets since the Cubs beat my Pirates the other night), but I never really got the hang of football. A lot of that was because I could never track the ball. One minute, it’s in the quarterback’s hand. Next thing you know, 2,000+ lbs. of flesh, helmets, and shoulder pads are covering up the pigskin. Then, of course, there’s the NBA. Now, I live in North Carolina, home of four ACC teams. That’s enough in-state competition to keep even the most lackadaisical of basketball fans interested from November through March. And as my husband says, when you’ve got that kind of college ball to watch, who wants to look at a bunch of millionaires running around on the court in their underwear?
Well, that may change. And it’s all because women are getting some roles in the game. Becky Hammon joined the San Antonio Spurs as a coach in 2014, and this year Nancy Lieberman has been added to the Sacramento Kings’ coaching roster. Both women had long, successful careers as professional basketball players. And then, this summer, Jen Welter landed a gig as a coaching intern for the Arizona Cardinals. And word has it that some players would have loved it if this seasoned football player had been given a full-time contract.
Now, when it comes to sports, history is usually only important when it’s time to pull out some record-breaking or comparative stats. But I’ll throw a little first lady history in here. Lou Henry Hoover, who was the nation’s first lady from 1929-1933, was an early and vocal advocate for women and sports. She absolutely adored physical activity. As a high school student, and then in her days in teacher training school, her best times were doing gymnastic and dance routines in the gym. She loved it when she was called upon to lead the PE class when the teacher was absent.
In the years when she was a Cabinet wife, she was a vice-president, and the only woman on the board, of the National Amateur Athletic Federation. Her advocacy for women’s activities in sports was centered around the health benefits, the self-assurance it offered women, and the overall improvement in academic performance. In each of these things, Lou was well ahead of her time.
Truth be told, she might have some issues regarding women in professional sports – not because she was against women’s equality (far from it!). But she had strong concerns about the connection between gambling and sports and believed (rightly so) that it adversely affected the fair conduct of the game. She would, no doubt, be greatly upset over Draft Kings and Fantasy Football.
But when it comes to rooting for women, I strongly suspect that if she were still alive today and still living in her beloved Palo Alto, she’d have season’s tickets to the Kings’ home games and would have already become close friends with Nancy Lieberman.
It was a hot, slow, lazy week of July 4, 1887, in Washington, DC, and a couple of newspapermen (and they all were, with the tiniest of exceptions, newspapermen), were up to mischief in the newsroom. “What can we write about?” they mused, pondering the fact that the president and his young, extremely attractive wife were at their farm, Oak View, located out the Tenallytown Road. Congress was gone, and anyone who had anywhere else they could be besides hot, swampy Washington, was nowhere to be found.
“I know!” one very enterprising reporter exclaimed. “Mrs. Cleveland is such great copy! We’ll write a story about her….We’ll say that she’s given up the bustle!”
And so, on July 5th, the nation’s newspapers were abuzz with word out of Washington that the twenty-two year old wife of fifty-year old President Grover Cleveland had set all Washington society aflutter because she had abandoned the bustle. The first lady had driven her buggy from the farm to the White House to meet with friends, so the papers reported, and they were all agog at her “bustle-less” attire. The papers concluded that the fashionable Mrs. Cleveland, who had been the nation’s style-setter since marrying the President thirteen months earlier, on June 2, 1886, would lead all women to abandon the bustle.
As a first-time biographer, and having yet to learn that news can easily be exaggerated, I reported the bustle incident with serious fact in my biography of Mrs. Cleveland. Years later, having learned much more about the challenges of research, and having begun to study first ladies’ fashions, I think the Frances Cleveland and the bustle story is still one worthy of repeating – albeit tongue-in-cheek and with a little more background added to it.
If, indeed, White House visitors found Mrs. Cleveland without a bustle, they may, in fact, have found her wearing a dress with a reduced bustle. The undergarment, which had been more or less a mainstay of women’s fashion since the 1870s, underwent a transformation in the latter part of the 1880s and was reduced in size. By the early 1890s, it disappeared completely from women’s styles as clothing adapted to the more active and streamlined “Gibson Girl” model.
Parisian couturier Charles Frederick Worth is credited with inventing the bustle. His goal had been to eliminate crinolines, the hooped undergarments that women wore to widen their skirts. Bustles in the 1870s were large and created and “S”-shaped figure, thrusting the bustline forward and the hips backward. In the 1880s, the bustle was rigid with a folding frame that was believed to support the back and improve women’s health. The bustle was also slowly abandoned as dresses moved from two pieces – a separate bodice and a skirt – to a design known as the princess line, a design attributed to Worth. A “princess dress” was a one-piece dress cut without a waist seam. With such a design, a smaller bustle would have been appropriate.
So, how did the bustle story with Frances Cleveland finally end? According to news reports, she and a close friend went shopping at Washington’s Woodward & Lothrop’s Department Store in September (1887). When the First Lady asked to be shown a bustle, the sales clerk replied: “Why, Mrs. Cleveland, ever since word got out that you had abandoned the bustle, nobody has bought one. We’ve moved them all to the basement! But,” said the enterprising clerk, “if you would like to see one, I’d be happy to go down there and get them for you.”
Frances supposedly turned to her companion and said, “Well, if they say I’ve quit wearing the bustle, then I guess that’s what I need to do.”
Since Hillary Clinton is looking for a fresh start – a start characterized by the words “small” and “humble” – I suggest she change her first lady role model. Not that there is anything wrong with admiring Eleanor Roosevelt, who is still one of the most admired women in America. But there is another first lady, one who was once admired for her leadership, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine even before her first lady years, and who set the precedent for first ladies getting coverage in Vogue magazine, who merits a closer look by Hillary. And this first lady’s personality and outlook embody the very traits of ‘small’ and ‘humble’ that Hillary Clinton would like to project.
Before I name my suggested new icon, let me add a few more details about the character of my recommendation. She was not a Democrat, which, of course, would easily explain why Hillary would not initially want to look at her more closely. She was fiercely Republican, and proud of it. She was so modest, that she refused to manipulate the press to call attention to her many accomplishments. Yet, this first lady was bold without being brash; complex, but straight-forward; endearing while still being authoritative. She was the first woman to get a degree in Geology from Stanford University. She translated an important mining treatise from the Latin, for which she was awarded a gold medal. She built a network before the phrase was even something to be defined in the dictionary.
When World War I broke out, she was immediately on the scene, offering support from her personal finances and lending her managerial expertise to organize stranded Americans, keep them fed, and help them find a way home. As the war dragged on, her organizational and philanthropic efforts helped wounded British soldiers and kept Belgians from starving.
In the United States, she took the floundering Girl Scouts and turned it into a successful organization that promoted the values which Hillary Clinton embodies: Independence; Self-Assurance; Confidence. This same first lady also opened the door for women to compete in sports at a collegiate level – another measure of her commitment to women’s rights and equal opportunities.
So, who is this paragon that Hillary would do well to emulate? She is Lou Henry Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt’s immediate predecessor. Eleanor’s many prodigious accomplishments have cast a long shadow over Lou’s, and unfairly so. Lou deserves her time in the sun. Hillary wants this to be the time she basks in the sunlight, too. To make that happen, I suggest she study up on Lou.
One hundred fifty years ago today, Frances Clara Folsom was born in Buffalo, New York. Her parents were Oscar and Emma Harmon Folsom, two people off the farm looking to be successful in the city. Oscar’s close friend and one-time law partner, Grover Cleveland, bought “Frank,” as she became known, her first baby carriage. When she was old enough to talk, he became “Uncle Cleve.”
Cleveland remained a confirmed bachelor while rumors swirled about Folsom’s infidelity. Cleveland’s sister supposedly once asked him if he ever planned to marry. “I’m waiting for my sweetheart to grow up,” he told his sister.
Frank did not have an easy early life. Her father died two days after her 11th birthday. He was not the best of financial managers, and his desk was littered with IOUs. Some of them were written to his former law partner. Cleveland stepped in as executor of his late friend’s estate, and kept Emma and Frank out of poverty.
Mother and daughter moved around, living with different family members, including a time in Jackson, Michigan. But Buffalo was home, and that is where they returned. After some tough high school years and a decision to drop out, Cleveland arranged for Frank to enter Wells College in Aurora, New York – a few hours’ train ride from Buffalo. By then, “Uncle Cleve” was governor of New York, and he had some clout with the college’s founder, Henry Wells, one of the two partners in the stagecoach firm of Wells-Fargo.
Frank thrived at Wells, and she was an “A” student. Cleveland arranged for a special rail car and rail siding to bring him from the Governor’s Mansion, in Albany, to Aurora to visit Frank. When he ran for president in 1884, Frank accompanied him on some of his trips around the state.
In the summer following her 1885 graduation from Wells, Cleveland proposed. Frank accepted. All was secret. The rumors swirled that the bachelor president had a sweetheart, and many thought it was Emma. Frank was dismissed by Washington insiders as a mere “schoolgirl.”
That schoolgirl captured the hearts and minds of the American public on Decoration Day, May, 31, 1886, when she waved her handkerchief at her fiance from a hotel room in New York City as she watched him pass by in the parade below. The American public couldn’t get enough of her. Two days later, she arrived at the White House at 6:30 a.m., on June 2, 1886, for her wedding that night in the Louis C. Tiffany-designed Blue Room.
With only newspaper pencil sketches, telegraph, and word-of-mouth, Frances Folsom Cleveland became the nation’s newest star. Women copied her hairstyles and her clothing. Church members wanted to drink from the same cup she had taken communion wine from. Working women lined up by the thousands to shake her hand at the special Saturday White House receptions Frank organized on their behalf. They loved her so much, they walked to the end of the line and waited another hour just to shake her hand again.
Frank was not as popular in the second Cleveland Administration (1893-1897) as she had been in the first. She was now focused on motherhood, entering the White House with daughter Ruth, and then bearing Cleveland two more daughters during their time there. Esther, the second daughter, is the only presidential child to be born in the White House, in 1893. Marion was born in their summer home, in 1895. Frank was expecting Richard when the Clevelands left Washington in March, 1897, and son Francis Grover was born in 1903.
In an era when we focus on a first lady’s accomplishments, it’s easy to dismiss Frank as simply being a pretty face. She was, in fact, the Jackie Kennedy of her time, providing strong support for the theater and actors, and organizing support for passage of a copyright law to protect American authors. She was a strong proponent of early childhood education, when the very concept was still being challenged, and held a kindergarten for Ruth and her playmates in the White House. Frank also advocated for higher education for women. In a nod to the attitudes of her class and era, she was strongly against suffrage for women, but once women gained the right to vote in 1920, she cast her ballot every time.
Her most enduring legacy may be the theater founded by her youngest son – Francis Grover. The Barnstormers Theater, in Tamworth, NH, the oldest ongoing professional theater in the country. And Frances spent many a happy evening there selling tickets and listening to audience reaction.
Happy Birthday, Frank!
DePaul beat Duke, 74-65, in the Sweet Sixteen. James Madison plays Texas A&M tonight -the game airs at 9:45 p.m. Notre Dame faces off with Oklahoma State on March 29.
No, I didn’t wander into some fantasy basketball tournament. I’m pulling the stats from the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament brackets.
Over the years, women’s basketball has gained increasing attention. Chalk it up to Title IX funds and the push for more equality between men’s and women’s sports in funding college athletics. However, the odds that women’s collegiate sports will ever be on par with men’s collegiate sports are long. “Odds” being one of the operative words here.
Some scholars of women’s sports place blame for the second-rate status of female sports teams on the shoulders 
of Lou Henry Hoover, the nation’s first lady from 1929-1933. Lou’s impact on women’s athletics occurred before she entered the White House. Lou had established a national reputation by 1918 for her interest in promoting the intellectual, emotional, and physical development of young women. The Girl Scouts of America helped her establish her early platform. But Lou’s organizational skills and the national network of contacts that she had established over the years through her fund-raising work with the Committee for the Relief of Belgium had established her as a formidable organizer. When the National Amateur Athletic Federation (NAAF) was founded in 1923, Lou was named vice-president. Lou was the only female officer, and she formed the Women’s Division within the NAAF.
Lou made it clear from the outset that the purpose of the NAAF was to promote physical activity for all college students, and especially for women. She effectively discouraged the creation of women’s sports teams where the inter-collegiate play might take on the characteristics that were already then common to collegiate men’s sports.
The NAAF’s organizing conference, held in April 1923 , voted to condemn the exploitation of young women “for the enjoyment of the spectator or for the athletic reputation of or commercial advantage of any school or other organization.” The NAAF criticized “the emphasis which is laid at present upon the individual accomplishment and the winning of championships.”
Lou was adamant about the focus of the NAAF: “It is to stress the play spirit in athletics rather than the highly competitive attitude which makes championships and records the goal. It is to protect girls’ sports from commercialization and exploitation.”
Her words could still apply today. A post on the website PolicyMic (Here’s How Many Billions…) observes that while college players make zero dollars, the NCAA is raking it in. In April, 2010, the NCAA signed a 14-year contract with CBS and Turner Sports for television rights that total $10.8B over the life of the contract. That money will get divvied up among the NCAA’s teams according to their records – obviously pressuring schools to produce winning teams in order to get a larger share of the revenue pie. Advertising provides another revenue stream. The average cost for a 2013 NCAA men’s tournament ad was $1.42M for a 30-second spot. (See CNN’s NCAA Tournament Fast Facts.)
Then there is the wagering. Legal wagering is estimated at between $90-$100M. Illegal wagering, including ubiquitous office pools, is placed at $2.5B. Women’s basketball is not exempt from odds-making, but the payout is significantly less. But the larger issue is whether or not we are watching a clean game, or a game where players will shave points or refs will overlook (or make excessive) calls. While the NCAA has very strict penalties for point shaving and referee misconduct, the amount of money that stands to be gained if the game is won (or lost) by a certain team always raises the question about possible fixing. (See The Atlantic’s blogpost on “Is March Madness a Sporting Event.”)
Even with their increasing competitiveness, women are faring better than their male counterparts in the world of college basketball. Eighty-seven percent of women players will graduate, as opposed to 72 percent of the men. Twenty-one women’s basketball teams have a 100 percent graduation rate. Race is a factor, too. There is a five-point disparity between the graduation rates of white and African-American female players, and that difference is declining. On the other hand, the gap between white and African-American male players’ graduation rates is 24 points. (See “Women’s NCAA tourney graduation rates.”) The NCAA has raised its requirement for schools to improve the average graduation rates of their athletes, but raising the standard does nothing to address the underlying problem that athletes, and especially male basketball players, are exploited by their schools and the public. That’s thanks to the money to be made by the NCAA, the colleges, the bookies, and the bettors. Not to mention the “one and done” rule that allows a male player to be eligible for the NBA after one year of college play (but that is a post for another day).
And we will forgo discussion of coaches’ salaries, endorsement revenues, and other non-financial perks that accrue to the winning teams.
Lou Hoover would likely have very much the same thing to say today as she said in 1923. Although I suspect she would advocate for college athletics that protected both girls’ and boys’ sports from commercialization and exploitation.
Mamie Eisenhower’s successor in the White House was Jacqueline Kennedy, and in the wake of Kennedy’s glamor, Mamie was quickly forgotten as the fashion trendsetter that she actually was. (And, besides, how does the old-fashioned name “Mamie” compete with the classy-sounding and French-spelled “Jacqueline”?)But in the beginning of the 1950s, the fifty-six year old first lady quickly established her bona fides with American women with her stylishness, her use of 
accessories, and her signature color. “Mamie pink” was one of the most popular colors for women’s clothing during the eight years of the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961). The color was bright. It was feminine. And it had a positive psychological impact on an American public that was anxious to put two wars behind it and get back to a sense of normalcy.
Mamie should also be remembered for her support of American designers. The gown she wore for the 1953 inauguration was designed by Nettie Rosenstein. Rosenstein began her career in the 1920s by designing private label brands for department stores. As the popularity of her fashions grew, other designers encouraged Rosenstein to develop her own label. By the early 1950s, she operated a successful fashion house under her own name. One of her employees was Judith Leiber, who designed the bag that Mamie carried at the inaugural (see photo above left). Rosenstein designed a beautiful rose damask evening gown worn by Mamie at a 1957 state dinner at the British Embassy. Mamie bought both off-the-rack and couturier from American designers throughout her White House years.
Grace Coolidge entered the White House in August, 1923, when her husband, Calvin Coolidge, became president on the death of Warren G. Harding. Even as the wife of the vice-president, Grace had gained a reputation as a fashion icon. Slender and athletic, her build was perfect for the slimmed-down, relaxed, and drop-waisted flapper styles that had become popular in the 1920s. She wore sleeveless and V-necked d
resses, raised her hemlines, and showcased the latest fashions.
Grace was an ebullient and outgoing woman, in contrast to her highly taciturn husband, and her choice of color and cut reflected her extroverted personality. Her official portrait shows her wearing a bright red, sleeveless evening gown, and she is posed with her white collie, named Rob Roy as a jab at the prohibitionists of her day. Two of her dresses on display at the Smithsonian reveal her willingness to wear a variety of colors and fabrics. One dress is a brown chiffon and lace, shot through with metallic threads. An evening gown of Grace’s is variegated shades of blue satin trimmed with dark blue sequins and gold glass beads. No single designer is associated with Grace. Her personal popularity and her varied wardrobe did much to democratize fashion during her White House years.
Forgotten First Lady Fashionistas
Michelle Obama wowed the press and the fashion-conscious public with the stunning Caroline Herrera blue and black creation worn at the state dinner for French president Francois Hollande. The black lace and blue silk creation is now added to the ever-lengthening list of stylish clothes that have the rest of us oohing-and-ahhing over Michelle’s fashion choices. (And note – this is the first dress with sleeves that Michelle has worn to a state dinner.)
Not since Nancy Reagan’s regal reign and her Nancy Reagan Red have we been so enamored with a first lady’s fashion sense. Barbara Bush was a grandmotherly type. She wore what fit well, but her matronly figure didn’t grab our attention, even if her styles were well-tailored and often colorful. Hillary Clinton, well, Hillary Clinton spent her eight years in the White House figuring out what looked good on her. As she wryly observed when she gave her victory speech upon winning her New York senatorial seat: “Six black pants suits later….”
Laura Bush had great taste, too. She toned up and slimmed down during her eight-year tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but her color choices gravitated toward monochromatic tans and browns, not the stuff that really grabs the attention of us closet fashionistas (her ruby red inaugural gown in 2001 long since forgotten).
Then enters Michelle Obama. Color. Cut. Couturier. (And Target and H&M, too.) We adore her style, don’t grouse too much about the price tags, and appreciate that she seems to have democratized fashion (even if she is wearing Jimmy Choo shoes!). The comparisons to Jacqueline Kennedy are inevitable.
Jackie has been my generation’s gold standard for first lady fashion. Michelle Obama will likely set the bar for my daughters’ generation. And we will remember very few in between. Unless we look a little closer.
Between Jackie and Nancy, two first ladies deserve attention for their fashion sense. Lady Bird Johnson, 17 years older than Jackie, would be an unlikely pick. But she deserves to be included in the pantheon of stylish first ladies.
Lady Bird had the unenviable position of succeeding Jackie at a time of great tragedy. Not only were we fixated on the lost youth and luster of the Kennedy administration, but it’s kind of hard to put the words glamorous and Johnson Administration together in a sentence. Lady Bird was no beauty, but the truth is, neither was Jackie. But Lady Bird loved beauty, and she understood the importance of being surrounded by beauty. Lady Bird’s yellow satin gown and sable trimmed matching coat radiated warmth and happiness. Not to mention that the gown 
was created by an American-born designer, John Moore.
Lady Bird’s sense of style was impeccable. Like many of her successors, she lost weight and took advice on how to make the best of her appearance. Her tailored dresses and slacks outfits were always accented with a scarf, a belt, or, since they still wore them in those days, often a hat. Lady Bird did not overtly make a statement with her clothing, as had her predecessor, but she clearly knew that what she wore spoke volumes.
Betty Ford is another first lady who’s sense of style has long been overlooked. Betty had been a model and a buyer for a Michigan department store, and she understood the importance of looking good. Like Lady Bird, Betty wore stylish clothing, often accented with belts, colorful scarves, or tailored with contrast piping at the neck- and seam lines. And, like Lady Bird, she came into the role of first lady on the heels of another national tragedy – the first, and so far, only, resignation o
f an American president under disgrace. Betty’s flair and cheerfulness was reflected in her clothing choices. Her palette ranged from baby blue, the color of the gown in her official portrait, to the burnt orange so popular in the 70s. She wore it all well. Betty celebrated American fashion, and received an award from Parsons The New School for Design in recognition of her style.