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"  What was it like\u00A0to work with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis? I have been asked that question countless times. Shortly after she passed away in May 1994, I told Time magazine, &amp;quot;She had an extraordinary ability to be interested in the person she was working with. She makes you feel you could do almost anything. Any man married to Jackie probably would have had to become president of the United States.&amp;quot;  The unfortunately all-too-familiar suggestion that Jackie&amp;#039;s editor role at Doubleday, where she worked from 1978 until her death, was merely a hobby for her amusement couldn&amp;#039;t be more off base. There was not a minute detail of an image or a single adjective of text that escaped her inspection. (Adjectives, by the way, were not her favorite part of the English language. &amp;quot;There are just so many of them!&amp;quot; she would say.) Books allowed Jackie to go everywhere she did not have the freedom to go in reality and to meet people she did not have the freedom to meet.  Jackie and I began our collaboration on our six books for Doubleday and Tiffany &amp;amp;amp; Co. in early 1979. A few weeks after I began as Tiffany&amp;#039;s design director, Walter Hoving, then the chairman of Tiffany&amp;#039;s and a friend of Jackie&amp;#039;s family, called me into his office. &amp;quot;I intend to have you work on a series of books with my friend&amp;#039;s daughter who&amp;#039;s an editor over at Doubleday,&amp;quot; he said. I knew he was referring to Jackie. &amp;quot;Put some materials together to show us what you have in mind, and I&amp;#039;ll see the two of you next week.&amp;quot;  The day finally arrived. Jackie and I were seated side by side on the sofa in Hoving&amp;#039;s office. From the outside, Jackie seemed isolated, distant, controlled, even hermetic--walled inside her much-celebrated aura of perfection. Suddenly, she was sitting beside me--so completely human, the legendary ironclad composure tempered by palpable apprehension. Was the past still haunting her? Undoubtedly. Irrational as it was, I went from nervous to protective. She didn&amp;#039;t miss that, just as she never missed anything. I know that the bond of friendship that lasted for 15 years was established in those first few moments. Hoving made it clear that we had a lot to live up to, and neither of us wanted this giant of a man to find us lacking. He wanted a series of new and lavishly illustrated books marketing Tiffany and its luxury products. His marching orders given and my proposed photos greeted with some enthusiasm, Jackie and I took leave of each other. I thought, Memorable afternoon, but this is not going to fly; Jackie will never agree to do it. I was wrong. She phoned within the hour. &amp;quot;The whole idea&amp;#039;s so great that we have to hit the decks running. These books Walter wants are going to be such fascinating social documents of American life. Tiffany will be there, but they&amp;#039;re not really going to be about Tiffany. You know I can&amp;#039;t do that. They&amp;#039;re going to document American society. Put everything together you can get your hands on and come down the street to my office in a week before we go back to see Walter,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;This is going to be fun!&amp;quot; So began our journey documenting American society&amp;#039;s progress in the quest of beauty and distinction. Jackie was in no way averse to work. Besides her children, it&amp;#039;s what kept Jackie, as she said, &amp;quot;comparatively sane&amp;quot; after living through some appalling times. For obvious reasons, Jackie could sense danger a mile away. Once, breaking one of her rules, she agreed to speak with a journalist who was writing a profile on me. The moment they met, I saw Jackie turn her head almost imperceptibly to the left. She smelled danger. Nothing was said on the spot, but that afternoon she called. &amp;quot;You know I can&amp;#039;t possibly speak to someone like that,&amp;quot; she said.  Jackie worked mornings in her office at Doubleday. Afternoons, she went back to her Park Avenue apartment and other projects with lifelong friend and trusted aide Nancy Tuckerman, her social secretary at the White House. However, if the morning&amp;#039;s work of positioning dozens of photographs in a layout or editing texts and captions or plotting the course of future books was incomplete by 12:30 P.M., she stuck with it. Jackie was proud of the books she worked on, and the list is long and wide-ranging, from Grace Kelly&amp;#039;s My Book of Flowers in 1980 to Diana Vreeland&amp;#039;s Allure to Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz&amp;#039;s Cairo trilogy. She was as proud of her book with Michael Jackson as she was of the book with interior designer Mark Hampton. An illustrated book on Indian gardens was of special delight, and she gave me a copy to inspire me. There wasn&amp;#039;t a novel by her cousin Louis Auchincloss that she hadn&amp;#039;t read, and she was thrilled when he agreed to write the introduction to Tiffany&amp;#039;s 150 Years, published in 1987. (She&amp;#039;d passed me a copy of Maverick in Mauve so I&amp;#039;d see &amp;quot;just how great&amp;quot; Auchincloss was before we started the book.)  Lunch during Jackie&amp;#039;s frequent editing sessions didn&amp;#039;t rate much consideration. If you pleaded hunger, she would open her pocketbook to produce a sad little plastic bag of carrot sticks. &amp;quot;Here, one of these will do the trick,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d say. Or an assistant would order in Styrofoam containers of iced tea and semiedible deli foods. These we&amp;#039;d spread on the floor of her surprisingly small office, where her desk was a clutter of books and papers. My own office in the Tiffany Building offered an expanse of carpet better suited to photo shuffling, so work moved along with Styrofoam and coleslaw set out for lunch. Productive as they were, these closed-door sessions had a relative absurdity that did not pass without comment. One afternoon, cross-legged on the floor in a gray Carolina Herrera pantsuit, Jackie said, &amp;quot;Oh! I wish Robin Leach could film this for Lifestyles of theRich and Famous!&amp;quot;  She was addicted to Carolina Herrera. The softly structured but square-shouldered, neutral-colored pantsuits with off-white round-necked silk blouses were Jackie&amp;#039;s work staples. For our &amp;quot;Breakfast at Tiffany&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; receptions to celebrate each new book, her suits changed to dark navy or black with a jacket by Bill Blass. There were no prints; stripes were the limit on pattern, or a barely perceptible windowpane plaid. Jackie had not said yes to accessories. There were few to none. A white-enamel-and-gold Jean Schlumberger &amp;quot;Jackie&amp;quot; bracelet and matching earrings were constants, along with a simple leather belt, a sober framed handbag with a shoulder strap, and sensible shoes. Because she had wonderful manners, sometimes she would also wear one of the Tiffany scarves I had designed, folded over her shoulder. That was it for daytime.  Only sometimes did she stray from her uniform. I would ask, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s going on today?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oh, John&amp;#039;s taking me to the 21 Club for lunch,&amp;quot; she would answer. I wouldn&amp;#039;t rate that, but if her son was taking her out, she would get very excited. Evenings were different. She favored terribly simple floor-length black satin sheaths with square shoulders. I remember her wearing one to a dinner thrown by Aimee de Heeren at the Wanamaker Munn mansion and nearly the identical dress, or perhaps the same one, to a dinner at Le Cirque hosted by Eleanor Lambert. No frills, but on a rare occasion the horizontal stripes she wore so well could be in pale orange and pink sequins, at once tailored and festive, like Jackie, who epitomized the American look that she herself had done so much to establish.  Our camp-out lunch sessions were repeated for years until one day, in answer to my lunch invitation of &amp;quot;Your floor or mine?&amp;quot; Jackie countered, &amp;quot;Couldn&amp;#039;t we go out to a real restaurant like normal people?&amp;quot; I called Sirio Maccioni at Le Cirque (at that time on 65th Street at Park Avenue), and from then on our lunches were at the corner table by the door, where Jackie could slip in and out with as little disturbance to herself or anyone else as possible. Of course, sometimes people could be dreadful, pointing and whispering. Some would walk right up to the table and ask her a question. She was always very gracious, though it was not a comfortable situation to be in in life. But Jackie could also render herself invisible. I remember dropping her off on Third Avenue when she was going to the movies. I said, &amp;quot;Are you kidding? I&amp;#039;m going to let you out of the taxi to stand in line to get a movie ticket?&amp;quot; And she replied, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ll see, no one will know.&amp;quot; She had her scarf over her hair, her big sunglasses, and her trench with the collar turned up. All you could see was the tip of her nose and her chin. She got in line to buy a ticket, and, of course, nobody noticed. It was like that--one way or the other. Jackie made you feel she thought the world of you and the project at hand. She, in turn, asked the world of you. Nothing slipped by that wasn&amp;#039;t up to her best expectations. As an editor, she was full of summary judgments. She was also determined and didn&amp;#039;t welcome disagreements. Rather, she sidestepped them. An image of a Nashville star&amp;#039;s holiday dinner table was edited out with the explanation &amp;quot;Now, you don&amp;#039;t want Caroline to think that I approve of stuffing orange rinds with sweet potatoes and melting marshmallows on them, do you?&amp;quot; Jackie was masterful at cheering on her friends and writers. Close to deadline, there would be a phone call at 1:00 A.M.: &amp;quot;Just checking to see you&amp;#039;re still working and not creeping off to bed. See you later this morning.&amp;quot; If she&amp;#039;d caught you out late in the evening, the early-morning call would go, &amp;quot;I just thought I&amp;#039;d kick you while you&amp;#039;re still down for the count. You know, there&amp;#039;s a deadline Monday, and now that the punctual Germans own us [Bertelsmann had bought Doubleday], deadlines are real.&amp;quot; Once, Doubleday management rigged a roadblock. A memo arrived: &amp;quot;Your cookbook is on hold until the two of you give us a book on weddings.&amp;quot; Jackie felt that demanded special treatment, so she told me to meet her back at her apartment. We sat in her favorite room, the library overlooking Central Park, all books and comfortable sofas. &amp;quot;I know we don&amp;#039;t really want to do this, but, with Caroline&amp;#039;s wedding, I found weddings can be pretty interesting, although I wonder how anyone survives with all those countdowns and checklists,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s do a book to let all those nice American girls off the hook and show them that they can do it their way--any way they want.&amp;quot; She was true to her word: The Tiffany Wedding, published in 1988, included everything from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney&amp;#039;s satin wedding dress, photographed in her bedroom at the Breakers in Newport, to a Texas-ranch engagement dinner with bottles of beer in an ice-filled laundry tub. There was nothing she didn&amp;#039;t know about fashion, and she wanted many designers incorporated into our books. The Tiffany Wedding features a trousseau by Bill Blass, a groom&amp;#039;s wardrobe by Perry Ellis, and dresses by Geoffrey Beene, Mary McFadden, Oscar de la Renta, and, of course, Carolina Herrera. Yves Saint Laurent, Tai and Rosita Missoni, Valentino Garavani, and Sybil Connolly (who made the dress for Jackie&amp;#039;s official White House portrait) all contributed to The Tiffany Gourmet Cookbook. Yet Jackie was more interested in how people wore things than in what they wore.  Along with Jackie&amp;#039;s frequent pep talks were many short notes to cheer me on or thank me for little gifts sent to thank her for making things happen that no one else could: &amp;quot;Look at your beautiful book and praise yourself to the skies. It just came in this morning--so my congratulations and much love.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I had such fun this weekend reading you and waltzing through rose petals in wintry New Jersey. It is just great. Please look at the editing and mark wherever you disagree. Could you have it back to Doubleday by Tuesday?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;How spiffy is my BEAUTIFUL TIE! And what fun it will be wearing it--with maybe one of John&amp;#039;s suits I will appropriate.&amp;quot; The last time I saw Jackie, we met at Le Cirque and talked about future books. The list of possibilities was endless. She ended the conversation with &amp;quot;I suppose when we&amp;#039;re 80 we&amp;#039;ll be writing a book called Tiffany Mushrooms.&amp;quot; After lunch, the waiter brought a variety of desserts. I&amp;#039;d never seen Jackie eat a dessert and suggested he take them away. &amp;quot;If you touch a single one of them, I&amp;#039;m going to stab you with my fork!&amp;quot; she warned. She ate all six desserts. I knew that she knew there was no more need for carrot sticks. We didn&amp;#039;t let it show, but we both knew. We walked over to Madison Avenue. I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and we went our separate ways.  The last note arrived after that, postmarked April 22, 1994--a month before she passed on. Dear John,  I just loved your letter--I think it is you who have given me all these sprees of joy at old Doubleday--and seeing you was always like champagne-- Everything is fine--soon we can have another festive lunch--and I think of you always with affection and gratitude and admiration for all you are doing.  xx Jackie  I have written 17 books since then. I could never have done it without her. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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