First, it was Princess Diana’s black sheep sweater. Next, it was Jane Birkin’s own Birkin. Now, Sotheby’s is auctioning off another piece of fashion history: the purple dress coat Jackie Kennedy wore on JFK’s election night. A photograph from the historic moment appeared on the November 21, 1960 cover of Life Magazine. The headline? “The Victorious Young Kennedys.”

“This coat was cherished by our mother, but with our mother’s passing, we feel it’s the right time to entrust the coat to someone who will appreciate and preserve it as our mother had, helping safeguard Jackie’s legacy,” the coat’s anonymous donor tells Vanity Fair.

“Provenance is everything with fashion,” Frank Everett , a Sotheby’s vice chairman tells me. We’re standing on the fifth floor of The Breuer building, the lan

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