AMERICAN WOMAN
The death of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy 20 years ago this month not only closed a certain chapter in 90s minimalist style, it also marked a symbolic cultural end to the decade. By Sarrah Le Marquand.
The death of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy 20 years ago not only closed a chapter in 90s minimalist style, it also marked a symbolic end to the decade.
It was a chilly but sunny Sunday afternoon in July 1999 as I hurtled down the Hume Highway in my cherry red Holden Barina. I was making my way from my hometown of Sydney to my soon-to-be-home for the next six months of Canberra, where I was due to begin a parliamentary internship the very next morning. As a university student completing my final semester of an honours degree in politics (albeit with a major in English in a nod to what I hoped would prove to be my eventual career as a journalist), my mind was whirring with thoughts of what awaited me in the coming months in the nation’s capital. I knew nobody there, and found myself wondering what impulse had driven me to quit a perfectly respectable part-time job in retail to start over in what I had been reliably informed was one of the country’s most freezing spots, and in the dead of winter, no less.
Suddenly my mobile phone rang, distracting me from my growing anxiety. I muted the Ally McBeal soundtrack that had been blaring – an appropriate accompaniment to my twenty-something neurosis – and took the call.
It was my sister, Emma, whom I had embraced tearfully on the front lawn of our family home only a couple of hours earlier as she helped me pack half a year’s worth of clothing and belongings into the aforementioned Barina for my Canberra sojourn.
“Sares,” she began, and I assumed she was going to inform me she was having trouble deciphering my handwritten instructions about recording the finale of my favourite OTT prime-time soap, Melrose Place. “I just thought you should know that there are news reports that Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jr. have been confirmed dead in a plane crash,” she told me gently.
And just like that, the formative era of my life – the 1990s – drew to an abrupt, and brutal, close.
When John F. Kennedy Jr. – the handsome and charismatic son of the late President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – married Carolyn Bessette, a former Calvin Klein publicist, in autumn 1996, America welcomed a new princess. In a country devoid of the official trappings of monarchy, the revered yet ill-fated Kennedy family was long considered the United States’s answer to royalty – and as the nation’s most eligible bachelor, Kennedy Jr. was undeniably its reigning prince.
In marrying the then 35-year-old magazine publisher, in a private ceremony on a tiny island off the coast of Georgia on September 21,
1996, the newly minted Carolyn Bessette Kennedy found herself thrust firmly into the spotlight.
Although she fiercely guarded her privacy – she remained elusive despite the insatiable interest in her and never granted the media with a single interview – Bessette Kennedy’s style quickly reached a status similar to that of her universally admired mother-in-law.
Within days of her marriage being announced, the then 30-year-old was being heralded as a beacon of modern American style by every notable fashion authority in the country.
In other circumstances, the heady accolades – showered even as the newlyweds returned from their honeymoon – might have seemed premature. But for Bessette Kennedy they were predictions that would prove fortuitous.
The reason? That dress. Clad in a bias-cut slip gown by the then little known designer Narciso Rodriguez (who had worked as a design assistant at Calvin Klein), her choice of wedding attire was a masterclass in understatement and minimalism. At once both alluring yet elegant, it was the nuptial moment that not only caused a revolution in bridal boutiques across the globe, but confirmed the impeccable eye of the woman who wore it.
“In a sea of voluminous Vera Wang princesses, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy redefined bridal glamour,” recalls Australian fashion designer Alex Perry. “The simplicity of a 30s-inspired satin cowl neck slip was shocking … and breathtaking.”
If ever a bride would have felt justified in giving Princess Diana a run for her money in the taffeta-and-train stakes, it was the one walking down the aisle to become Mrs Kennedy. But in shunning the meringueshaped ballgown that convention had to date dictated, Bessette Kennedy established herself as a woman not about to compromise her commitment to deceptively low-key beauty and modern simplicity just because she had married into a powerful dynasty.
This was the 90s, and there was a new queen in town.
And it was not just the dress. From the outset, every detail of the most anticipated marriage in years heralded that this was a woman quietly determined to do things in her own tasteful yet fuss-free and egalitarian way.
As designated wedding photographer, Denis Reggie would later recall of the ceremony, which took place by candlelight in a weathered and non-descript chapel: “No grandeur, nothing more than just what it was. The simplicity – that was the beauty.” A beauty that continued to resonate long after the honeymoon glow had faded and the
Although fiercely guarded, Bessette Kennedy’s style quickly reached a status similar to that of her universally admired mother-in-law
couple returned to the routine of daily life in New York, setting up a marital home in their Tribeca loft while Kennedy Jr. continued to work on George, the glossy magazine devoted to politics, that he had launched a year earlier.
For his new wife, who struggled to adjust to public attention in a way that must seem unimaginably quaint to a generation subsequently raised in an era characterised by social media-fuelled chronic over-sharing and reality TV-driven fame, it wasn’t always a smooth transition.
But however haunted she occasionally appeared by the constant media scrutiny, she never failed to deliver in living up to the lofty fashion expectations that sat upon her slender shoulders. Whether heading out for brunch with friends, accompanying her husband to an A-list gathering in Washington DC or walking the couple’s dog, Friday, on the streets of Manhattan, Bessette Kennedy embodied a brand of 90s minimalism that was specific to New York and continued to redefine the very essence of effortless style.
“CBK was an extraordinarily beautiful and tasteful young woman – the latest in a long line of modern Americans who both set and elevated fashion trends,” says Patricia Mears, deputy director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
“Who else could have chosen the cuttingedge deconstructed designs of Yohji Yamamoto and transformed these challenging clothes into a decidedly personal and understated look? Her aesthetic was refined but not distant, elegant without being off-putting, and polished but with a sense of ease.”
With a preference for the sensibility of designers such as her former employer Calvin Klein, and Yamamoto, as well as Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Manolo Blahnik, Helmut Lang, Prada, and, of course, her wedding dress creator Narciso Rodriguez, Bessette Kennedy’s commitment to clean lines, a minimal colour palette, tailoring and shirting was steadfast.
“Her impact has been so profound that even years after her death, CBK is a globally recognised woman of style,” continues Mears. “Prior to her death, designers such as Ralph Lauren openly expressed admiration for her style and were inspired by her look. Americans in general still laud her style as well as that of her husband, JFK Jr.”
Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex channelled one of her fellow American’s most iconic looks earlier this year when she paired a long black skirt with a white button-down shirt – an ensemble designed by Givenchy’s creative director Clare Waight Keller, who once worked alongside Bessette Kennedy at Calvin Klein.
It was a connection also echoed in the gown Waight Keller designed for Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry last year, and almost certainly an intentional one given the royal bride had once praised Bessette Kennedy’s famous slip dress as “everything goals”.
“She was the original icon of stealth wealth,” says Vogue Australia fashion features director Alice Birrell. “Not showy, not extravagant, her simple, refined aesthetic lives on now in brands like The Row, Gabriela Hearst and Khaite. It’s interesting to note that there’s been a return in popularity to the classic black Manolo slingbacks and mules and the vintage-wash denim she used to wear.”
Adds Patricia Mears: “Today, fashion is defined by the frenetic pace of new ideas and celebrities who are styled by armies of professionals. Perhaps that is why Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s look stands out as refreshingly calm, elegant, self-styled and a unique counter to our overwrought times.”
Some things, it seems, never go out of style. And yet, with her signature brand of elegance mixed with cynicism, sly sense of humour and understated sensibility, it’s hard not to conclude that in many ways the 1990s died along with the woman who personified the decade so definitively.
When I was growing up, I recall one day reading an article in a journal in my high school library arguing that the end of the Beatles symbolically marked the end of the 60s. (It was in September 1969 that John Lennon told the other Beatles of his intention to leave the group.)
The thesis was that it was significant the band did not outlive the decade of revolution and protest and massive social change with which they had become so synonymous.
They were words that would later strike a loud chord for me – who came of age in the 1990s – in that the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, along with Bessette Kennedy’s older sister Lauren, in that plane crash on July 16, 1999 effectively marked the end of that decade in so many ways.
How would her style and approach to life have evolved as the ironic and understated 90s gave way to the bolder and brasher and 2000s? It’s near impossible to imagine. Her fashion sensibility and her cultural impact remains the perfect summation of the decade that officially drew to a close only months after her death.
Although many across the world will pause on July 16 to observe the 20th anniversary of the heart-wrenching and premature loss of America’s favourite son and his beautiful yet enigmatic wife, for some of us – particularly women in our 30s and 40s – it is a milestone that transcends the enduring fascination for the most glamorous and fascinating political dynasty of the 20th century. Nor has it anything to do with the so-called Kennedy curse.
We are not only mourning the loss of a young woman taken too soon. We are not simply reflecting upon the legacy of a modern fashion icon. Beyond all this, we are grieving anew the passing of a decade: a decade of understatement, of cynicism, of minimalism, of quiet elegance and restraint. A decade that was the 1990s.
“Her aesthetic was refined but not distant, elegant without being off-putting, and polished but with a sense of ease”