The woman the front row most want to look like

Times

7 hours ago

She was the uptown New York It girl who married into the Kennedy clan then died in a plane crash aged just 33. You might not have heard of the fashion industry's favourite muse, Carolyn Bessette, but you'll recognise her signature minimalist look — partly because everybody is wearing it again now, 25 years after her death.
A black satin slip with thonged leather flip-flops. The perfect plain black tee, rollneck or blazer. Lots of black, in fact, right down to the lozenge-lensed sunglasses. Vintage blue straight-leg jeans and loafers; white jeans with clumpy 'Dad' trainers. A camel coat, Hermès Birkin and that other must-have one per cent accessory: long, rich-girl hair in the perfect shade of buttery blonde.
If it sounds like the default outfit on Instagram right now or a particularly pertinent Pinterest board, that's because CBK has become something of a posthumous influencer. Photos of her have long been mentally mood-boarded by fashion editors who pay homage in trend-resistant cigarette pants and crisp white shirt combos. Their ultimate wish list label, The Row — where handbags cost £5,000 and coats can reach £7,000 — is an expert modern synthesis of CBK's Prada, Yohji Yamamoto and Narciso Rodriguez-infused wardrobe. Now that same look has filtered through to Cos, H&M and Zara — even Shein, where a camel coat costs £20.69.
• How Carolyn Bessette Kennedy became Gen Z's favourite It girl
Bessette, who was an exec at Calvin Klein during the brand's 1990s heyday and gained celebrity status for her relationship with John F Kennedy Jr (son of JFK and Jackie O), was a walking billboard for the label when she was alive. After her death in 1999 she entered a pantheon of tragic glamour alongside the likes of Grace Kelly, Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe — other rich blonde archetypes who are long-held and oft-cited key style references for insider industry types, and all the more aspirational for never having grown old.
Yet after the Succession-related rise of what TikTok calls 'quiet luxury' (classic, anonymous and affluent-seeming clothing designed to fit in at the country club), the internet has mainstreamed Bessette's chic appeal into algorithm fodder. In fact she has become such a sartorial pin-up that when new images of the actress playing CBK in a forthcoming TV series emerged last week, the costumes were condemned as inaccurate, inauthentic and — fashion's worst crime — cheap.
'These garments look too much like modern-day replicas,' NY Mag's The Cut announced. 'Zara,' one commenter responded on Instagram. 'God awful styling, start over,' another exclaimed.
• Why Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's style still matters today
It's true, the screen CBK's clothes do lack the original's je ne sais quoi — the leather too plastic-looking, the satin too poly-lustrous, the hair too 'Gwen Stefani-level blonde', according to US Vogue. The magazine even tracked down Bessette's colourist, Brad Johns, and extracted from him an offer to recreate his patented 'chunking' technique to the exact shade of upmarket toffee required.
'No one would believe that Carolyn would ever have had that colour from me,' 5th Avenue's one-time highlights maestro said of the shots from the American Love Story series, which is set to air next year. 'It's too 2024.'
Since then its producer, Ryan Murphy — who also created the American Horror Story franchise — has been at pains to explain that these were not the costumes used for filming but a series of images created for his studio partners.
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Yet the strength of reaction is reminiscent of those around the unveilings of recent Disney 'reimaginings' of key characters — which goes to show how careful you must be when you're messing with everybody's favourite blonde princesses.