Tuckernucks Jackie dress sweeps Capitol Hill |

Jackie shows up at work events, at baby showers, at cocktail parties, in family portraits, her braided neckline elegantly framing the face.

She is in Zoom meetings, she’s on Capitol Hill. And she was all over the Republican National Convention last week.

Wait — the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis, icon of the Democratic Party, at the RNC? And on Zoom?

Of course we’re not talking about Jackie the person. We’re talking about Jackie the dress.

The Jackie is an A-line short-sleeved polyester tweed shift dress by Washington, D.C.-based women’s fashion company Tuckernuck that sells for $268. Named for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the dress comes in the colors of a WASPy crayon box — red, croissant, pearl white, hot pink, palm beach green and 20-some more shades — and its combination of mod-shape and tweed fabric recall the former first lady’s blend of youthful hipness and Chanel-inspired traditional glamour. Four braided faux pockets, studded with gold buttons, sit on the hips. Tuckernuck has also produced sleeveless and long-sleeve versions, the latter of which is slightly pricier.

“We go back to who our customer is inspired by,” said September Votta, one of the brand’s three co-founders, in a recent interview. “We always find that Jackie Kennedy continues to remain relevant to them and a source of inspiration. And we think a lot about the meaning of names when we’re designing products. So we wanted to create something that worked on a lot of body types and looked good across multiple colors.”

Since Tuckernuck introduced the dress in the summer of 2022, the founders say they have sold nearly 100,000 Jackies. While Votta and Madeline Grayson, another co-founder, said that their biggest markets are in New York and Texas, the dress has become a common sight on the streets of D.C., especially on Capitol Hill. (D.C. is in Tuckernuck’s Top 10 markets.) A Fox News anchor, first ladies and members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historically Black sorority to which Vice President Harris belongs, have all worn the Jackie. Amazon carries a knockoff — or a dupe, in the sunny parlance of deals-driven-ethics-be-damned consumers — for $48.99.

“It makes you feel instantly polished and put together,” said Lauren Reddington, a communications specialist who has blogged about the dress on her site, By Lauren Anne, and has the dress in both pink and green. Before a recent move to California, Reddington worked for a number of years on the communications team for Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). “When I worked in the Senate, I was constantly on my feet, running around to different events. And this is a perfect dress [for that]. So it’s really no surprise to me that it’s being so embraced, by D.C. and Capitol Hill.”

“I was initially hesitant of the price, but when I thought about it and looked at my workwear wardrobe, it really just fit a gap that was in my work closet,” she said.

The Jackie appears especially popular among those who work for Republican politicians. Last week, in Milwaukee, there seemed to be some tacit agreement that the Jackie would be the official dress of the RNC. In most crowds, at least one could be seen. A heather-gray Jackie bopped to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” at one of the buzzy after-hours warehouse parties. A cream Jackie was in line for a banh mi at the concessions outside the expo hall. A half-dozen red Jackies — so many red Jackies! — dotted the convention floor, camouflaged against its crimson carpet.

Not that every braided-neck shift was the real thing. “This is from Amazon,” said a woman in a Kelly green impostor on her way out of the convention one night.

“You can always tell,” a lilac Jackie declared about the fakes from her bar stool at the Trade Hotel on Thursday night. As she stood up, it was clear that her dress fit particularly well — offering shape where little seemed given, skimming her knees just so. “You have to get these hemmed and darted,” she said as she walked away.

Tuckernuck did not set out to create an “it” dress. Founded in 2012 by Votta, Grayson and Jocelyn Gailliot, who is Grayson’s older sister and also serves as CEO, Tuckernuck began as an e-commerce business that sold the designs of contemporary brands such as Saloni, Sea and Loeffler Randall. “We just had this vision of taking the boutique model and bringing it online, because we have always been very passionate about discovery and telling the story of brands and products that we find through friends,” said Grayson, who met Votta while the two were at the University of Pennsylvania together.

They did a round of family-and-friends fundraising in 2015 but were swiftly profitable and operate without outside investors, a rare reality in the fashion business, where even small hipster brands are often funded by venture capital. (Grayson and Votta declined to disclose more specific financial information about the size of their business.) “We’re very careful with our designs and inventory and making sure that we’re listening to the customer and not just creating a bunch of things that don’t sell,” Grayson said.

Also unusual is the brand’s D.C. origins: “It’s not a fashion-first city, obviously, but people are very busy and going to lots of events, and they want to look nice,” Grayson said. “So I think we serve that purpose and solve that problem for what a lot of the D.C. women represent. There are a lot of people around the country that aren’t in New York, where they have all this fashion at their fingertips.” They opened a store in Georgetown in 2017.

In 2018, Tuckernuck — which is named for a small island off the coast of Nantucket — began its own private label, which has since become a majority of its business.

“We felt like there was this void, especially in the beginning, for beautiful, high-quality dresses under $300,” Votta said. The founders said they ordered the Amazon dupe to assess its quality and were disappointed. (“We have nothing to worry about,” Votta recalled thinking.)

Other Tuckernuck bestsellers include the Callahan, a $128 swingy shirt dress, and the Chloe, a $298 shirt dress. “We’re always thinking of things you can wear during the day, but also at night, or to work and out to drinks,” Votta said. By not selling their goods through other distributors, Grayson and Votta said, they do not have to mark up their designs the way other brands do. “We’re always obsessed with the quality surpassing an item’s value,” Votta said. “We are in the weeds of the details of what we’re making,” Grayson added.

Votta said they expected the Jackie to be a hit but were “blown away by the success” when it sold through almost immediately after they first introduced it. In part, the timing gave it a boost: “It looks great on Zoom,” said Reddington, who works remotely.

“We joke that it’s the return-to-work dress,” Votta said. “You can feel really polished and put together, and you don’t have to think about your full look.” Rather than mulling over matching pants and a top or a necklace to elevate the dress, “it’s a one-and-done deal.” Grayson added that its versatility is also key: “It’s really amazing to see the variety of events it’s worn to, and the body types and how it’s styled.”

But is there something ironically Republican about this dress with a Democratic origin myth? A staffer for Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) joked on X that GOP staffers’ Prime Day carts would be stocked with a copy of Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and Amazon’s Jackie dupe.

And although no one in the Trump family has worn the dress, multiple reports have stated that Kennedy Onassis has been a style inspiration for Ivanka Trump and her stepmother, former first lady Melania Trump.

“It does not feel political to me,” Reddington said. “The look is classic and timeless. I would say it’s political only in the sense that working in the Capitol itself is [political].” And because the dress references a significant moment in D.C. style, she said, it emphasizes the historic nature of working in politics. “It gives you the sense of all the moments in time that came before you,” Reddington added.

An emerald Jackie spotted in Midtown Manhattan in mid-July shrugged in confusion when asked about the dress having partisan associations. “Wait, wasn’t Jackie Kennedy a Democrat?”

Kara Voght contributed to this report.

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Tuckernucks Jackie dress sweeps Capitol Hill

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