When Sarah Pidgeon was cast as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy just over a month ago, dozens of global news outlets covered the news. She is to star in Ryan Murphy’s American Love Story, about the tragic relationship of the late Calvin Klein publicist and John F. Kennedy Jr. The casting announcement went viral and few noticed that the role of the other half of the central couple was still undecided. More than 25 years since her tragic death, the enigmatic Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy is still magnetic.
CBK, as her fans call her, is the original poster girl for quiet luxury. She married into the Kennedys, the closest thing America had to royalty, which automatically gave her princess status. Her understated, classic style came to epitomise ’90s minimalism, and she wore restrained, timeless pieces – but with enough confidence and grace to make them interesting. “The concept of American royalty is grounded in casual simplicity unlike our British formality,” says the style and fashion editor Emma Elwick, herself a long-standing CBK admirer. “There’s a reliable allure to her breezy style. She was physically glacial, but her style is simple and easy to deconstruct and emulate.”
Bessette-Kennedy was someone who understood the power of saving to buy a few perfectly cut, versatile staples; an off-the-shoulder LBD, a crisp white shirt or a pair of Prada loafers. Today, there are countless Instagram accounts dedicated to her clean look and a number of fashion brands who spotlight the same fuss-free sophistication, including Toteme, Khaite and Nili Lotan. When three of Bessette-Kennedy’s wardrobe pieces went up for auction at Sotheby’s last year, Staud designer Sarah Staudinger quickly snapped them up. The Prada and vintage leopard coats, as well as a Yohji Yamamoto jacket, were sold for a combined $177,600 (about £113,500). The TikTok generation love her, and there are hundreds of tutorials explaining how to replicate her look. “Her style is so timeless,” says Liz Tregenza, a lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion, UAL. “It fits into current quiet luxury trends and can be recreated easily with vintage pieces and new – and likewise with designer or more high-street pieces. Her look was always stripped back of ornamentation, with so little jewellery, that it let the simple and elegant clothes speak for themselves effectively.”
With John F Kennedy Jr in 1998 in New York
Bessette-Kennedy in New York in 1996
Although CBK is known as one of America’s defining style icons, her wardrobe wasn’t exclusively restricted to brands from her home country. She loved an avant-garde heavyweight, delving into the collections of Prada, Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. “She chose the simplest pieces from the conceptual greats – that is itself a talent, and befitting of her low-key elegance,” says Elwick. Her skill lay in ensuring that she wore the clothes, not the other way round. “You would not think Rei, or Comme. You think Carolyn,” adds Bates. “It’s like John Pawson, my favourite architect, said: ‘Minimalism is not defined by what is not there, but the tightness of what is, and the richness with which this is experienced.”
Tregenza agrees: “It’s not just about the clothes she wore, it’s also about the body within them. There’s something about how CBK seems to hold herself in photos.”
Bessette-Kennedy in Rive Gauche in 1998 at the Municipal Art Society gala
Photographer Jackie Johnson set up @carolyn_iconic, an Instagram account dedicated to CBK’s style, as a destination to house the countless pictures of CBK she had been storing on her phone and laptop. Within five years, she amassed more than 53,000 followers. She thinks part of Bessette-Kennedy’s appeal lies in how forward-thinking she was; the fashion ideals that she upheld – a tight capsule wardrobe of purposeful, well-made classics – are finally aspirational to the modern shopper. “She avoided trends,” says Johnson. “Her style was timeless, with an emphasis on quality and fit, and that’s where fashion is circling back to now. You can look at a photo of her from 1996 and think, ‘I’d wear that today’.”
The minimalist influence of CBK is pervasive in the current fashion landscape. When the global fashion search platform Lyst announced its quarterly index of the hottest fashion brands this month, its top 10 featured a strong contingent of luxury labels that imbue stealth wealth, including Prada, Bottega Veneta and The Row. Low-key Scandi brand Cos became the first high-street name to enter the list, famed for its elevated, pared-back (and CBK-adjacent), classics. Olivia von Halle name checked CBK as an inspiration for her most recent cashmere collection, describing her as “a future athleisure icon”. “Designers fawn over her because she represented purity of vision,” says Johnson. “She was the muse you didn’t need to dress up or overdo.”
Bessette Kennedy and her husband in 1998
Although very little is known about Bessette-Kennedy’s personality, what we do know is that she was desperate for privacy. Even after marrying John F Kennedy Jr in 1996, she had no desire to do rounds of interviews or become a high-profile socialite. Of course, this only made the press and the public want her more; we are fascinated by characters unavailable to us. Her tragic death – aged 33, in a plane crash – compounded our fascination. “When she died, she was effectively ‘frozen’ style-wise in a specific moment in time,” says Tregenza. “I’d argue that the fact she died young, in some ways, cemented her position as this style icon.”
Ryan Murphy has yet to confirm the release date of American Love Story, but you can rest assured that it will only further fuel our fascination with America’s most reluctant style princess. “I think she’d be a little baffled by all it,” says Johnson. “Her style wasn’t about impressing the media, it was about being herself. Maybe that’s what we’re all really responding to.”
