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In fashion, only the real favourites have acronyms. See SJP for Sarah Jessica Parker, ALT for fashion editor André Leon Talley and – particularly relevant right now – CBK for Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.
The wife of John F Kennedy Jr who died in a plane crash in 1999 is sometimes seen as America’s answer to Princess Diana. Like Diana, she was loved for her style – dubbed minimalist, chic or “quiet luxury”. Instagram is full of accounts posting archive images of her, influential brands like The Row, Toteme and Gabriela Hearst design clothes that channel her approach to dressing and there have been books and auctions in recent years.
The full extent of the deification became clear this week, when images of actor Sarah Pidgeon as Bessette Kennedy in Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming Kennedys Netflix series American Love Story were seen for the first time.
In one image on Murphy’s Instagram, Pidgeon is pictured wearing a rumpled knee-length brown coat, cropped trousers and black polo neck, with a Birkin bag, and bright blond hair, while on-set images show her in a satin midi skirt, Converse and leathery jacket.
There was an immediate reaction online, and it’s fair to say fans do not approve. “This is fashion murder,” wrote one in the comments of the Murphy post. “Whoever styled cbk needs to be fired,” wrote another. Details seem to particularly irk – from the wrong shade of blond (Bessette Kennedy’s hair colourist, Brad Johns, described it as “too 2024”) to the bag. Eagle-eyed observers have noticed it’s a Birkin 35, a slight variation from her preferred Birkin 40.
Such is the outrage that Murphy, in an interview with the fashion industry newsletter Line Sheet, described the images as a “work in progress” and clarified that the “right” items would be swapped in, including that Birkin bag. He admitted that the reaction had taken him by surprise. “I had no idea that people cared as much as they do, but I guess that’s a good thing,” he said. Twenty online experts on Bessette Kennedy’s style have been approached to consult on the wardrobe.
Murphy, whose work has often taken on real-life figures, from Truman Capote to Joan Crawford, is no stranger to fashion on screen. He made The Assassination of Gianni Versace in 2018 and Halston, about the 70s designer, in 2021. This is the first time, however, one of his productions has taken on a fashion icon that has citizen archivists logging her every look online. This contrast is the issue, argues fashion writer Liana Satenstein. “I don’t know if you can include the painstaking research in a miniseries that has such an element of camp to it,” she argues. “It would be this bizarre dichotomy.”
The legend around Bessette Kennedy’s style has reached mythical level in the 26 years since her death. A publicist at Calvin Klein, she began dating Kennedy in 1994. The two became the focus of paparazzi, with photographers snapping Bessette Kennedy on the streets of New York, wearing labels like Calvin Klein (then designed by Narciso Rodriguez), Yohji Yamamoto, Prada and Comme des Garçons, but also staples like jeans, white shirts and polo necks.
Fans talk about the way she tailored her jeans, and how she removed labels from designer clothing. In an era where personal style is seen as the ultimate status symbol in fashion, it’s these details that have made Bessette Kennedy a lodestar.
“It was ‘this is me, this is Carolyn, take it or leave it,’” says Sunita Kumar Nair, the author of CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, a Life in Fashion. Amy Odell, who writes the fashion newsletter Back Row and is working on a biography of Gwyneth Paltrow, says it’s in contrast to now. “Many ‘it girls’ today have stylists and personal shoppers,” she argues. “Now, personal style is bought and sold. This was just her taste, how she put herself together every day.”
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Jack Sehnert runs the @carolynbessette Instagram account, which has 63,000 followers. He says the popularity of Bessette Kennedy archive images grew because they were a tonic to the existing aesthetic. “Instagram was a barrage of logos and colourful glitz up until about five years ago, when her image started popping up again alongside references from the show Succession,” he argues. “When the term ‘quiet luxury’ went viral, who could have possibly been a better poster girl? The striking images we all know resonate with an entirely new generation because of their elegant simplicity.”
But with close to three decades of interest in her style, it’s become a “get the look” commodity. “It goes from real woman to paparazzi shot to an image you see on your screen to a flat lay [of clothing items] to the product that you ultimately buy online,” says Daniel Rogers, the fashion news editor at Vogue.
Satenstein agrees. “We’ve been taking this woman’s existence and putting it on a Pinterest board [for a long time],” she says. “It’s a little sad, because I don’t think she had a say in it. [It happened to] Jane Birkin [too] but she passed away later in life, and had some agency over herself.”
How should Murphy and his team improve Pidgeon’s outfits before the show debuts next year? When asked if she will be consulting on the project, Kumar Nair replied “No comment” but she does say it’s “very smart” to speak to online experts, and suggests also involving those who knew Bessette Kennedy, like Rodriguez, Calvin Klein and her sister, Lisa. “I would be semi-humble about it and ask them to talk,” she says, adding “[Bessette Kennedy] was a major curation herself. So that’s how you would have to approach it.”
