How Brands Capitalize on Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy
According to her biographer, she probably wouldn't have even wanted to be a fashion icon.
In today’s issue of Back Row:
A look at the enduring appeal of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and how the fashion industry has tried to cash in on her style.
Her biographer Elizabeth Beller, author of the new book Once Upon a Time
The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, explains how she might actually have felt about becoming a fashion icon.
Loose Threads, including the latest on JLo, the mystery of Emily Ratajkowski’s swim line, and more.
On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife of nearly three years Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in a small plane off Martha’s Vineyard. This July will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of their death, as will a fresh round of media, books, and podcasts about John-John, as he was known, and his mysterious wife, a head-jerkingly striking former Calvin Klein publicist who married not just a Kennedy, but the Kennedy.
The fascination with her 33-year-long life has proven remarkably enduring, as has the allure of her minimalist personal style. The fashion world seems intent on keeping her alive, as she embodies so many things the industry reveres and sells at top dollar: discretion, style so perfectly mild it’s impossibly chic, magnetism she couldn’t subdue if she tried, and the disinterest in tackiness that Succession fans and #oldmoney TikTok enthusiasts alike have come to associate with generational wealth. On the full spectrum of ways to be rich and famous, Lauren Sánchez in her décolletage-flaunting Instagram glory exists on one end, and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in her simple white shirts and humble headbands ducking her head before the paparazzi, falls on the very opposite.
The media and public will be analyzing what’s at the heart of the fascination with Carolyn for another 25 years and likely beyond. But surely, a lot of it can be attributed to her silence.
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