A Flood Destroyed Jacqueline Kennedy's Dress Weeks Before the Wedding, and the Newspaper Did Not Print the Dressmaker's Name

12 September 1953. St Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island, receives 800 guests for a morning wedding. Another 400 will join them for the afternoon reception. John F. Kennedy is 36 and has just become a senator from Massachusetts; Jacqueline Lee Bouvier is 24 and works as a photographer and reporter. They are seven years away from the White House, but already at that moment nobody is looking at anyone else.

The wedding was staged like a state occasion, even though nobody held a title. It was led by Archbishop Richard Cushing, a family friend. A papal blessing from Pius XII was read out. Four more priests assisted. The bride walked to the altar on the arm of her stepfather Hugh D. Auchincloss, while the tenor Luigi Vena sang Ave Maria. Thousands of onlookers waited outside. The New York Times put it on the front page, Time sent an exclusive photography team.

The reception was at Hammersmith Farm, the stepfather's Victorian estate overlooking the sea - the same house that would later become their summer residence as president and first lady. Twelve hundred guests ate creamed chicken in vol-au-vents and vanilla ice cream under an enormous marquee, and the cake had five tiers filled with raspberry preserve.

Fifty metres of taffeta and one flood

The dress became one of the most recognisable bridal designs of the twentieth century. A princess silhouette, a wide neckline, a draped bodice, made of silk taffeta - the skirt alone consumed more than 50 metres of fabric. Over her hair she wore a rose point lace veil that had belonged to her grandmother, fixed with a tiara and orange blossom. A pearl necklace, a diamond bracelet - a gift from Kennedy - and a bouquet of small pink and white orchids with gardenias.

That is the official version. The real one is that a few weeks before the wedding a flood in the studio destroyed the dress and several of the bridesmaids' gowns. Everything had to be sewn again, in a hurry, without anyone on the outside noticing. If you have ever looked at a wedding photograph and thought it all looked effortless - there is your answer.

The name they did not print

The biggest story around that dress is not about the fabric. For years nobody knew who had created it at all. The designer was Ann Lowe, an African American dressmaker who already dressed women of America's upper class and reached Jacqueline through her mother. In its report, The New York Times did not mention her name. It wrote that the dress had been made by "a coloured dressmaker".

Twelve hundred guests, a five-tier cake, an exclusive photographer from Time - and room for two words about the woman who sewed the single item by which the whole wedding is remembered. Recognition for Ann Lowe came years later, when its effect was considerably smaller than it would have been that day.

Seventy-three years on, the church in Newport is still open to the public and still draws tourists precisely because of that wedding. The story the guides tell is about the Kennedys. The story worth telling is about how easily a name can be left out of a text, and how long it then takes to put it back.