Certain First Ladies have a signature color as well as signature cause. Barbara Bush wore royal blue. Laura Bush favored red. And Mamie Eisenhower preferred pink. The gown she wore to Ike’s 1953 inauguration was a departure from the wartime styles of the previous decade, Graddy says: as people conserved materials in a mournful time, women’s silhouettes had become slimmer and more militaristic; hemlines had gotten shorter. “This was start again of much more celebratory inaugurations,” Graddy says—which would explain why Mamie didn’t skimp on the rhinestones. Her pink peau-de-soie gown is covered with more than 2,000 of them.