If Jacqueline Kennedy imported European style to the White House, this was hardly surprising. European ‘design’ in the later Fifties and Sixties flourished as never before, the imprimatur of status and quality. A European label—attached to a commodity, an idea or a person—ensured distinction, and thus a price premium. This development was actually quite recent. To be sure, ‘articles de Paris’ had a longstanding place in the luxury goods trade, dating at least to the late eighteenth century; and Swiss watches had been well regarded for many decades. But the notion that cars made in Germany
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