In Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, Ryan Murphy’s latest show, we watch Sarah Pidgeon’s Carolyn Bessette Kennedy agonise over her nail colour. Instinctively, we know this isn’t idle indecision. Though so little is known about America’s answer to Princess Diana, one thing is clear: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was a woman who knew herself. Her hesitation over the scarlet polish wasn’t about aesthetics, it was about visibility. Namely, that she didn’t want it. And yet, as often happens to women who crave the privacy most of us take for granted, she was thrust slap bang into the brightest spotlight. It is here she has remained, nearly 30 years after her tragic death, alongside her husband JFK Jr. and her sister, at just 33.
The fascination with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, or CBK, as she’s often referred to, has only grown. Sunita Kumar Nair, a fashion journalist and author of the book CBK, which is widely regarded as the definitive account of her style, and who also consulted on Murphy’s FX series, recalls the early days of the book: “She just wasn’t on the ephemera of anyone at the time when I was writing it. And now it’s like she’s everywhere.”
So why does America’s people’s princess remain so captivating—even to audiences who weren’t alive during the height of her reluctant fame? Because she refused to play the celebrity game. That refusal, Nair and others argue, became the defining force of her legacy, shaping fashion, media, and the way we think about modern icons to this day.
The Reluctant It Girl: From Publicist to Public Figure
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy existed in the public eye only briefly, but it’s precisely the scarcity of her appearances that has amplified their impact, theorises Hikmat Mohammad, a fashion editor who has written extensively on CBK. “Carolyn is a mystery,” he says. “In the age of social media, we’re all so nosy and fascinated with each other that with CBK, there’s only a handful of images, items, and people that can speak about her style.” That limited access, combined with her restrained public image—neither performative nor excessive—has propelled her into the realm of a person defined more by what she withheld than what she displayed.
“There’s this mystery element about her,” adds Sunita Kumar Nair, “and I think that’s incredibly unusual these days.” Before she became a household name, CBK was a publicist for Calvin Klein. The skills that the job demanded—discretion, poise, and control over visibility—carried through to her life in the public eye, but Nair explains that the transition was far from easy. “I mean, she had a terrible, terrible time of it. When you’re a private person and suddenly catapulted into this stage of being Mrs John Kennedy, you kind of lose your identity.” She adds, “A lot of friends spoke about that, and they compared her to Diana in that way, because they both married men who lived with that spotlight throughout their lives. It was almost unnatural for them not to have the attention on them, so they didn’t really get it. They didn’t really sympathise as much as they should have. I think they tried to, but it was just a very heavy burden for her.”
John F Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy walk along Varick St., New York.
(Image credit: New York Daily News Archive / Contributor via Getty Images)
Her mystique, which remains intact today, was rooted in an almost preternatural understanding of attention. In a culture now defined by constant comparison and algorithmic validation, CBK’s ability to withhold feels even rarer. Nair reflects, “I think it’s this theme of keeping in check with yourself. And I think that was something Carolyn did very well, not only from a fashion point of view, but from a personal point of view, and I think that’s probably why John found that very attractive about her.”
We, the public, meanwhile, have projected our own longing onto her restraint. As Nair observes, “I think there is this sort of longing to hark back to some kind of truism of living your life and not looking at what everybody else is doing.” In an era of hyper-visibility, CBK’s elusive presence reminds us that there was once a time when a celebrity could be seen and yet remain untouchable. “There’s also something very romantically melancholic about the way CBK dresses. She’s almost yearning in every photo. The fairytale is so close yet so far,” adds Mohammad.
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in New York
(Image credit: Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma via Getty Images)
Quiet Luxury in the Pre-Minimalism Era
After the excess of the ’80s, with its glut of Dynasty-style shoulder pads and power dressing, CBK’s minimalist-before-minimalism approach felt like a sartorial slate-clean. “The industry was sick of the Golden Eighties and its maximalism,” notes Mohammad. After a decade bloated by conspicuous consumption, her wardrobe was refreshingly restrained. “She had a really good intuition for style. She had a vision of what she wanted to look like, and she didn’t really stray from it,” observes Louis Pisano, a fashion and culture critic who grew up going to the elite East Coast private schools where JFK Jr. and CBK were lionised.
Her approach to dressing was neither performative nor reactive. Nair explains, “Style-wise, she didn’t just buy everything and follow all the trends. Minimalism was becoming a trend at the time, but I think she’d always dressed like that.”
Her wardrobe of tailored slip dresses, camel coats, and pared-back ensembles conveyed confidence without demanding attention. It’s a form of self-assuredness that feels as refreshing today, against the backdrop of relentless performativity, as it did after the headiness of the ’80s. “Unlike other ’90s icons whose style was more overtly trend-led or logo-driven, CBK embraced a kind of disciplined minimalism. She repeated silhouettes. She trusted tailoring. She relied on neutral palettes. That restraint gives her wardrobe longevity,” says Vestiaire Collective Style and Artistic Director Gayaneh Guiragossian.
I don’t think anybody really fully knew her, apart from, I’m guessing, her sister and mother, and probably John. Even then, that may not have been entirely true.
Sunita Kumar Nair, author of CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion
As Nair puts it, “When you know yourself, you know how to dress, and you know how to deliver. You know how to choose clothes that enhance who you are as a person, and that’s the underlying message of what CBK was about.” In an age of dizzying trend cycles, algorithmically influenced identities, and personal brands, CBK’s sartorial discipline serves as a chic reminder that true style is more about clarity than consumption. “Carolyn’s style is a reminder that true luxury is quiet confidence—not constant reinvention,” Guiragossian adds.
That kind of restraint is increasingly rare when we’re bombarded with images. Though the ‘mere exposure effect’ has long been studied in psychology—showing that people tend to build a preference for things the more they’re exposed to them—we see this play out to dazzling effect online, where we are actively inundated with products. In one study focused on Gen Z, social media was found to be particularly influential in fashion impulse buying, especially among female users who frequently see trends in their feeds.
“Carolyn’s style is a reminder that true luxury is quiet confidence—not constant reinvention,” says Vestiaire Collective Style and Artistic Director Gayaneh Guiragossian.
(Image credit: Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma via Getty Images)
Was CBK The Last Pre-Internet Icon?
“There’s this mystery element about her,” says Sunita Kumar Nair, “and I think that’s incredibly unusual these days.” Her limited presence—both public and photographic—allows audiences to project fascination onto her rather than consume her life in full, something almost impossible for today’s stars in the 24/7 media environment.
Nair suggests that the longing for that kind of discretion is partly nostalgia for a time when life felt simpler. “Another friend of hers said that life was really simple in those times. I think it’s interesting that people are harking back to different times now, like 2016 or whatever.” She adds that there’s a deeper yearning for what she calls a “truism of living your life and not looking at what everybody else is doing.” Louis Pisano observes, “It’s very bizarre because I think people are having an internal fight… they want to go back to life before that time, but at the same time, they want to live that experience, but they want to live it online.”
I think because we don’t really know a lot about her, people are able to project things onto her.
Louis Pisano
In a world where “everyone can be an it girl now,” Pisano argues, CBK’s frozen image feels almost like a relic. “We were starting to see the cracks in the facade, but we never really saw this sort of implosion that probably would have eventually happened. We’re stuck seeing her in this one period.” In this light, CBK is pedestaled not only as a style icon but as a cultural figure emblematic of a pre-Internet moment when fame was rare, and the public had to clamour for whatever scrap of detail they could find, rather than being fed information instantly through social media and the always-on attention economy.
Pisano trails off, imagining CBK in today’s media landscape: on Instagram, or The Real Housewives of New York, where her sister-in-law Carole Radziwill starred. It’s a stark reminder of how radically fame has changed. “I think there’s a feeling that actually being a little introspective and a little more guarded about your personal information is a good thing,” adds Nair. She continues, “I don’t think anybody really fully knew her, apart from, I’m guessing, her sister and mother, and probably John. Even then, that may not have been entirely true.”
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in New York
(Image credit: Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma via Getty Images)
Why We Can’t Look Away: The Enduring Allure of CBK
We keep returning to Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, in part, because she allowed us to project our own fascination onto her. “I think because we don’t really know a lot about her, she didn’t do a lot of interviews or media, people are able to project things onto her,” says Louis Pisano. She was “natural and effortless,” he adds, a rare quality in a culture where today it takes immense effort to live (or, at least to perform living your life) as you wish.
When asked what CBK might think about the swell of renewed media focus on her, Nair answers: “I know that she probably wouldn’t like it [the book]. I think John probably would be like, ‘oh, hey, look, that’s just…you’re a Kennedy now, so just get used to it,’ but I have a feeling she would probably just be stunned.” She adds, “This whole story is very tragic, and like a lot of glittering stories, it tends to have this very human, normal ending…everybody faces death at some point.”
CBK remains modern and relevant precisely because she never tried to be either. “Now you are able to engineer yourself to be at the forefront of culture, whereas CBK just naturally was,” Pisano observes. Mohammad agrees: “The reason we’re returning to CBK’s style is because there’s a hunger for privacy, and her clothes do that because we only know her through her clothes.”
Portrait of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy
(Image credit: Joe Vericker/Sygma via Getty Images)
Nair concludes by reflecting on CBK’s assertion of selfhood: “I think she probably reminded herself that she wasn’t just Mrs Kennedy…that she was Carolyn too, which is why I call the book CBK, because she actually marked one of her thank-you envelopes as CBK. I saw it as her way of seeing herself absolutely as an equal to JFK Jr., and I felt that was very powerful: a small statement of herself to validate her person.” Beyond fashion, Nair emphasises that CBK valued human connection. “She loved people and all the relationships she had, even in a fashion context, like with Yohji (Yamamoto) or Manolo (Blahnik)…social media kind of isolates you from actually going and having a coffee with a friend or having dinner. There’s a need to simplify life,” she reflects.
From her wardrobe to her withdrawal from a public so voracious to consume her, CBK endures because she lived on her own terms as fully as she could within the confines of the Kennedy name and all that it entailed. In doing so, she reminds us that style, privacy, and self-possession are worth protecting. In an age of oversharing, we owe more to that legacy than to the endless outfit inspiration she provides.