My Grandmother, the Style Icon: Jacqueline Leisure

One woman’s classic ’40s looks, right down to the peep-toe shoes.

This photo of my grandmother, Jacqueline Leisure, appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1947. She was volunteering for a benefit at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital and was modeling some looks for their charity fashion show. She was 23 at the time and had just graduated from UCLA. The outfit was a loaner, but every time I see this picture, I always feel like she could have been wearing that high-waisted skirt and shoulder-padded blouse her whole life—it looks so natural on her. (I also love how the peep-toe platforms tie it all together.) My grandmother’s style has always been refined, playful and ruthlessly elegant. Now, at 86, she keeps her wardrobe in Tupperware containers in the walk-in closet of her Santa Monica  home. Trips to her closet stand out as some of my most cherished moments with her. Every piece she owns  is equally graceful and glamorous and, most of all, has a story to tell.

—Katherine Morgan Hatch, 30, social worker