Sophie & Nona

In the back room of a suite in a Park Avenue office building stands a figure that looks just like Jacqueline Kennedy. More precisely, it looks like Jackie only in the sense that whatever fits the figure also fits the wife of the President of the U.S. It is Jackie's own ladykin, a dressmaker's dummy that has all of her dimensions. To this dummy, whenever the call comes through, flock busy seamstresses with costly fabrics and a sense of dedication and flair that is not often seen, say, at quilting bees. They fit and they pin, they cut and they stitch, and when they are all finished, the result gets its picture in the papers, filled out this time by Jackie herself.

The workroom belongs to two sprightly grandes dames who are known collectively as Chez Ninon, a small and very expensive dress salon that was costly and exclusive long before it became famous as one of Mrs. Kennedy's favorite dress shops. The only difference now is that Proprietresses Nona McAdoo Park and Sophie Meldrim Shonnard, who would be wows in Auntie Mame, are so pleased to have Jackie's business that they flutter and worry that too much public notice will drive Mrs. Kennedy away. There is little chance of that; Chez Ninon has just what Mrs. Kennedy likes: custom-made copies of the best of Paris.

Desperation & Success. Nona and Sophie got into the dress business in 1928, the year before Jackie was born. Sophie's father was a prominent judge in Savannah, Ga.; her first husband was Edward (Ted) Coy, Yale '10, an All-America fullback. Nona, as the daughter of William Gibbs McAdoo, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Wilson, was once known as "the Cabinet beauty." "One day," says Sophie, "Nona called me up. Her husband had died recently. She said, 'I'm desperate. We must do something to keep busy.' Well, in those days women didn't work and we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We thought of a dress shop."

After the war, Fifth Avenue's Bonwit Teller invited them in to set up their own custom-order salon; with their family connections and friends in New York and Washington, Nona and Sophie found it easy to build a clientele. It was at Bonwit's in the early '50s that the wife of Senator Jack Kennedy began buying some of their clothes. Two years ago, they moved out to a new place of their own on Park Avenue. Jackie moved with them, and so did such customers as Mrs. William Paley, Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham, Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, Mrs. Douglas Dillon and Mrs. John Sherman Cooper.

Good Sport. To suit them, Nona and Sophie still go to Paris twice a year. On their last trip a few weeks ago, they bought "a little of each," says Sophie. "Some customers adore Lanvin. Others like Nina Ricci and Cardin, Givenchy and Balenciaga." After ordering the originals, the ladies buy fabrics, buttons and other necessary materials. Back at the workshop, their custom seamstresses make up duplicates, and Chez Ninon announces a showing. A private one is held for important customers, such as Jackie and Mrs. Dillon; Jackie herself gets the first look at new clothes, if she requests it.

Suits start at $850 and go up; gowns can run into the thousands. If a customer orders a dress or a suit that has already been bought by another, Nona and Sophie mention the fact. If the customer still wants it (and if the earlier buyer is Jackie, she nearly always does), she can have it. Nona and Sophie still cluck with dismay about the time last fall when Mrs. Paley, a woman who should know better, swept into the White House dressed in a Chez Ninon special, and then suffered the supreme embarrassment: there was Jackie in the identical dress. Sighs Sophie: "Jackie was a good sport about the whole thing."

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