The key lesson from Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s style is to keep the messaging simple
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arolyn 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.
