‘The antithesis of what Gen Z grew up with’: Love Story conjures up fervor for Carolyn Bessette’s model | Style

While US pop culture has a long-held fascination with the Kennedys, much of the recent fervor around FX’s newest hit show, Love Story, has been aimed at the style of Carolyn Bessette, who worked as a publicist at Calvin Klein before marrying into America’s most storied political family.

Open up TikTok and you’ll see influencers doing their best to recreate her looks and makeup routines. Brands are invoking Bessette to promote their products; hair care brand Schwarzkopf posted about a highlighting technique the brand called “foiled cashmere, inspired by Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy”.

And the fervor makes sense – Love Story, which chronicles the dramatic and ultimately tragic romance between John F Kennedy Jr. and Bessette, has become FX’s most-watched limited series ever on streaming, with more than 25m hours viewed across the first five episodes on Disney+ and Hulu, the network recently announced.

Given that Bessette was both incredibly private and fashionable, those seeking to emulate her have previously relied on paparazzi photos or red carpet shots; now, they’re being influenced by Love Story.

Sunita Kumar Nair, creative director and author of CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion, argues that fashion was the primary medium through which Carolyn chose to communicate with the world around her.

“I think that was the reason why she didn’t really give that many interviews, and why she felt that maybe the fashion just speaks for itself when she’s public,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.

Bessette’s style is defined by many as 90’s minimalism – with a specific focus on designers like Calvin Klein, Jil Sander, Yohji Yamamoto and Prada. While many viewers see the chic, no-frills looks of the 1990s as a larger trend, Nair says Bessette’s style stands out because of her disregard of what was en vogue.

“I think she just knew who she was and dressed the way that she felt represented her,” Nair, who also consulted on Love Story, said. “She was incredibly private. She didn’t really seek fame, you know, which I think is a really attractive quality, especially in this day.”

Bessette’s style has also been categorized as the epitome of “quiet luxury” – a style informed by her work at Calvin Klein that has resurfaced in recent years.

“[Calvin Klein] was thinking more about fit and materials than he was embellishments and this opulent luxury,” said Dr Colleen Hill, senior curator of costume at the Museum at FIT.

“It’s a real shift away from much of what we saw in 1980s fashion, which was all about showing off how fashionable you were and how much money you could spend on your clothes.”

Ironically, Bessette’s deeply individualized style, influenced by a strong sense of self and a refusal to follow along with what was popular, is now being emulated by the masses.

“She is probably the antithesis of what Gen Z has been growing up with,” said Nair. In the era of influencers posting their every move, Nair suggests that “the quieter you are, the more interest you or mystery you engender”.

The lengths that people are willing to go to access Bessette’s essence are far-reaching. Earlier this week, a Prada camel coat worn by Bessette sold for $192,000 at auction.

The Fashion Auctioneer, who hosted the sale, said they grossed $408,750 through the auction, which included four items of Bessette’s that she gifted to Rosemarie Terenzio, John F Kennedy Jr’s assistant and a friend of the couple, and twenty original vintage pieces that were loaned to Love Story.

While the sale was timed to the resurgence of interest in Bessette’s style, Lucy Bishop, fashion historian and owner of the Fashion Auctioneer, had been looking into pieces worn by Bessette for more than a decade.

“I always had an instinct and felt that eventually the time would come where Carolyn Bessette Kennedy would gain recognition for being one of the greatest style icons of the 20th century,” she said.

Bishop held a two-day exhibition of the pieces in Manhattan prior to the close of the auction, where she saw firsthand the magnetic pull that women felt to Bessette – and the ways in which that was being passed down through generations.

“Women who were of Carolyn’s generation in the 90s, were bringing their daughters to see the clothes,” she said. “I thought that was quite sweet.”

“We even had two little girls who came with their mother and were asking if [Bessette’s] wedding dress was there, because they’d seen it in a book and thought she was so beautiful and wanted to see it.”

Of that multi-generational appeal, Dr Hill added: “Young women are sometimes wearing what their mothers had in their wardrobes at the time. That’s one of the trends: looking back at what someone before you was wearing, thinking that looks chic, maybe being able to get your hands on it.”

Many women of Bessette’s generation have also recently taken the opportunity Love Story is presenting to the culture to share their experiences, and their wardrobes, while working at Calvin Klein in the 1990s.

Kara Mendelsohn, who worked in sales in the late 90s, shared some of the rules that she had to follow while working for the storied designer in a TikTok video. “We had a very specific image we were supposed to uphold,” she said in the video. “We were not allowed to wear any nail polish … you really needed to wear extremely minimalist makeup.”

Her daughter, Ella, also posted about her mom’s connection to the era depicted in Love Story, and tried on vintage Calvin Klein pieces, styled by her mother to emulate Bessette.

Bessette’s influence has even prompted a whole new generation to run to the country’s oldest apothecary, CO Bigelow. Prior to the Love Story phenomenon, the store – which was founded in 1838 and is now owned and run by Alec Ginsberg, a fourth generation pharmacist, and his father – was singled out in a now viral TikTok as the store Bessette went to for her signature tortoise shell headbands.

Now, with an explosion of interest generated from the show, the store has been flooded “to another level than we’ve ever seen before”.

“And it’s not just downtown New Yorkers. It’s tourists, people traveling from all over,” Ginsberg told the Guardian. Substack writer Emily Sundberg reported that CO Bigelow’s sales are up 500% since 2023, and the store sold six figures’ worth of hair accessories in February.

“It’s much easier to walk into Bigelow and play with headbands and hair accessories and feel like you’re Carolyn, then to go into Calvin Klein and be like, ‘let me try on a $5,000 dress,’” Ginsberg said.