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Carolyn Bessette Kennedy has been an insider style icon for ever, but this year she has flipped from under-the-radar reference to global phenomenon. Ryan Murphy’s Love Story, a glossy dramatisation of her doomed romance with JFK Jr, gave us nine delicious hours of lingering closeups of her white tank tops and jeans, her simple black dresses, perfect black oval sunglasses and tortoiseshell headbands. If you didn’t know you wanted to dress like CBK before you started watching, you did by the end.
Carole Radziwill, who was friends with Carolyn, has pointed out that copying CBK’s style is pretty much the least CBK thing you could do. Her friend, she told the Deuxmoi podcast, “pulled her hair back in a headband because she didn’t want to wash it every day. She did what felt natural to her and she dressed in things that made her feel comfortable and most like herself. Mostly jeans and button-downs and T-shirts. The takeaway is not to mimic her style, but to do and wear what feels most authentic to you. Be yourself. She was very much herself.”
The lady makes a good point, of course. What made Carolyn so compelling was that she had complete confidence in her own taste. She didn’t overthink it, or dither over accessories. She most definitely was not planning tomorrow’s outfit based on a character in a TV show. Her look wasn’t a construct, it was her natural vibe. And you can’t clone someone’s vibes by wearing the right sweater.
Still, I don’t think that means we can’t nick a few good outfit ideas here and there. My favourite episodes of Love Story are the early ones, when Carolyn, played by Sarah Pidgeon, is working at Calvin Klein. This is when her wardrobe is at its finest, when she is a girl-about-town, rolling into the office with a hangover and hopping in a cab after work to the next party. Clothes you can wear to the office that are also cool are an important wardrobe category. But the office wardrobes of female characters on TV tend to be either preposterously glamorous – I’m looking at you, Emily in Paris – or deliberately frumpy. Why is it that a male detective in most British dramas can wear a suit, but his female colleague will be in an ugly hooded anorak and/or dubious novelty knitwear?
In the first episode, we see Carolyn on the subway to work, wearing a black polo neck, straight black trousers and black loafers, with a plain dark bag. The simplicity makes it easy to copy, but at the same time impossible to copy: what is the secret sauce that makes it devastatingly chic? It is in the fit, and the edit. Trying on 19 pairs of black trousers to find the perfect cut, rather than ordering online and hoping for the best, is how you get the fit. The edit is about having the confidence to hold back. The flat shoe, the absence of shine. Having the conviction not to add a heel or jewellery is a power move here.
CBK is the negative image of that other iconic 1990s New Yorker Carrie Bradshaw. There is very little visual noise: no colour, no sugar hit, no dopamine dressing. She puts a black midi skirt with a black silk cardigan and black sandals, or a white pencil skirt with an almost austere black jacket. The kind of outfit that would get you nowhere on the algorithms as an Instagram influencer. Tropes of office dressing can get quite shouty – shoulderpads, power earrings, pussy bows – but this minimalist 90s version has a seriousness that translates well into the workplace. And because it stays elegantly clear of the power-dressing cliches – shoulderpads, power earrings, pussy bows – this wardrobe never looks or feels like workwear in the prescriptive sense, which is why it is cool enough to wear after 6pm for a vodka tonic or (hey, it was the 90s) six.
We can’t get-the-look our way to charisma. We can’t buy je ne sais quoi. And sadly, we definitely can’t borrow her cheekbones. But we can learn from the logic of minimalism: keep the messaging simple, don’t overthink it, don’t be afraid to repeat it. The only accessories you need? A pair of sunnies and a flip phone.
Model: Fu at Milk Management. Hair and makeup: Delilah Blakeney using Moroccanoil and MAC. Styling assistant: Charlotte Gornall. Sunglasses, £155, Ray Ban. T-shirt, £14.90, Uniqlo. Belt, £10, ASOS. Skirt, £30, Marks and Spencer. Shoes, £65 Charles + Keith. Chair, £199, John Lewis
