Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and JFK Jr.’s Legacy Lives on 25 Years After Their Death: How Their ‘Old Money Aesthetic’ Is Inspiring the TikTok Generation
LONDON — July 16, 1999, is a somber date in the Kennedy family history. It’s when John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, died in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard on their way to a family wedding. Bessette-Kennedy’s sister, Lauren Bessette, was also on the plane.
Twenty-five years later, people haven’t stopped talking about them and their style continues to resonate.
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Of late, the svelte blond New Yorker has been the subject of two books, Sunita Kumar Nair’s “CBK: Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy: A Life in Fashion” and Elizabeth Beller’s “Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.”
And for the first time, an item of clothing from her wardrobe, a black silk wrap trench dress from Yohji Yamamoto’s spring 1998 collection, went under the hammer at Bonhams in New York. The dress sold for $8,960 — quadruple the pre-auction estimate.
Like his wife, Kennedy Jr. had an unforgettable style. Jonathan Anderson used the American president’s son as inspiration for the costumes in Luca Guadagnino’s film “Challengers,” starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.
“When JFK Jr. was younger, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, there was kind of an effortlessness to his wardrobe — like he could wear anything, and sex appeal would always be there,” the designer told WWD.
People continue to be fascinated by the couple who personified wealth and sex appeal. To the TikTok generation, they’ve become synonymous with the Old Money aesthetic, a style reserved for other legendary American families such as the Vanderbilts and Gettys.
The aesthetic has accumulated more than 130 million views and on Instagram, the hashtag #OldMoneyAesthetic has amassed more than 385,000 posts.
“They represented old money and [this famous] family name, but they put their own modern twist on legacy. JFK Jr. would cycle around Manhattan and Carolyn was a working [girl] before she met him. They were working individuals, even though they accepted gifts and first-class treatment,” Nair said in an interview.
Kennedy Jr. was a lawyer and magazine publisher, while Bessette-Kennedy was a publicist at Calvin Klein.
She added that they had a certain allure because they didn’t give interviews, or speak to the press. The mystique was even greater because, for so long, the Kennedys were America’s version of the British royal family, and were steeped in adoration, and scandal.
Beller set out to write her book in 2019 after reading articles about Bessette-Kennedy and noticing discrepancies between the way the media portrayed her, and the way those who knew her spoke about her.
She hopes the book is a lesson in kindness.
“We never know what someone is going through; you never know what they’re bringing to the table, or what battle they have going on. At this point, it sounds trite, but we really need to be kinder to one another,” Beller said.
She made a decision to not use paparazzi photos in the book, saying they treated Bessette-Kennedy unfairly.
But without the paparazzi shots, there would be very few images left of the private couple who are now regularly featured on designer’s mood boards and Instagram fan accounts.
Bessette-Kennedy’s style was very much of the era. She favored crisp white shirts and minimal dresses, such as her Narciso Rodriguez wedding dress which resembled a nightgown.
She worked for Calvin Klein and had a few other labels hanging in her closet: Ann Demeulemeester, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Prada, Valentino and Yohji Yamamoto.
“Carolyn depicted something that women have kind of lost — being glamorous, but in a modern way. She was confident and wasn’t swayed — not even by JFK Jr.,” Nair said. On and off duty, Bessette-Kennedy never mirrored Kennedy Jr.’s slouchy tailoring or gorp-core styles.
“In Carolyn’s time, you had to decipher what she was wearing and why. It was like putting a puzzle together and really tuning into what the message was with each piece. She gave a [sartorial] continuity throughout her three years in public life,” she added.
Although Nair believes that Kennedy Jr. and Bessette-Kennedy will have revivals on and off throughout the years, the Kennedy magic won’t end there.
The baton has already been passed to Kennedy Jr.’s nephew, Jack Schlossberg, who is said to have inherited his uncle’s charm and outdoorsy nature.
Ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election in November, Schlossberg announced a new gig as a political correspondent for Vogue magazine through a playfully impromptu-style photo shoot around the Condé Nast offices wearing a white shirt and black necktie in one image and an I Love NY T-shirt with black Nike trainers, carrying on the family’s laid-back cool.
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy Through the Years: Never Before Seen Photos of Her ‘Captivating Life’ and Fashion
Launch Gallery: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy Through the Years: Never Before Seen Photos of Her 'Captivating Life' and Fashion
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