CBK, JFK Jr., WTF (why the face?)

On quiet luxury and loud conflict

Last Christmas, I brought a coffee table book to a white elephant party. This sounds like a dud selection, a decorative dead weight among martini shakers, pilates gift cards, and candy-colored lip treatments. But instead of getting buried by its shinier peers, my book stole the show and got stolen multiple times. It was the item of the evening.

The book, of course, was about Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

The public fascination with CBK holds strong 26 years after her tragic death. She’s soon getting the Ryan Murphy treatment on FX with American Love Story, a highly anticipated series out early next year about her relationship with JFK Jr. Teaser images from the show starring Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn have already stirred up controversy, with people saying the clothes look too cheap, the hair too bottle blonde. “Aritzia Love Story,” read one tweet. “Totally wrong…why the fuck is she all ashed out with her hair only one color?” questioned Carolyn’s former hairdresser.

The real deal vs. the Ryan Murphy replica

A quick and colorful refresher: Carolyn Bessette met John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1992 at a Calvin Klein fitting, where she worked in VIP sales and publicity. He stepped into a new suit, she eventually stepped into a new role as the woman who snagged the world’s most eligible bachelor. He wasn’t an acquisition that sat in her closet obediently like a Yohji Yamamoto dress—their whirlwind romance involved multiple breakups and makeups, all tracked by swarming paparazzi. One legendary anecdote: during their tumultuous courtship, she changed her outgoing voicemail message to say “hey, hon, I’ll be back by seven o’clock, can’t wait to see you!” to make him think she’d moved on with someone new. No surprise, he kept calling. The rest of the world wanted Carolyn’s number, too, hungry to know more about the woman who’d captivated American royalty.

You may think the off-the-hook frenzy is only fabric-deep. CBK is a style icon with a timeless cool that screams elegance without screaming at all—the woman defined today’s “quiet luxury,” but her version of classic was anything but boring. I go catatonic while scrolling the beige-washed feeds of influencers heavily featuring Jenni Kayne and The Row. I perk up at street style photos of Carolyn. She’s even been called a ghost influencer.

The intrigue translates to sales. Tortoiseshell headbands she wore in the 90s still fly off the shelves at old school NYC pharmacies like CO Bigelow and Zitomer. Three of her coats—including the faux leopard stunner below—went for more than $177,000 in a Sotheby’s auction last year.

No notes.

While the fashion fixation is warranted, it's also flattening. She was more than a clothes hanger, though part of her appeal was that anyone “could” achieve her brand of minimalist chic. So much so that bridal salons made lifesize cutouts of her iconic wedding dress, next to her famously handsome husband…with her head removed so brides-to-be could take her place on the arm of People’s Sexiest Man Alive. Smile for the American dream. This is both an eerie echo of the public’s guillotine-like treatment of her and a reflection of her everywoman appeal. But no one could pull it off like Carolyn. Her style’s innate and effortless—trying to imitate her is beside the point.

Maybe she's impossible to replicate because her appeal rests in the expression that anchors the clothes. The images of her that live rent-free in my mind have nothing to do with what she's wearing and everything to do with her face.

Pour a tall glass. Sip it slow. We're about to get a little salacious.

In February 1996, seven months before their wedding, paparazzi snapped Carolyn and John having a blowout fight in Battery Park—a grimly on-the-nose location, since the argument got physical. John pulls Carolyn’s arm, Carolyn jumps on John’s back. John appears to smack Carolyn and pull her ring from her finger. It's urgent, visceral, and difficult to watch. How could they—one of the most famous and famously private couples in the world—take off their gloves so blatantly in public?

It’s hard to imagine this taking place today, with celebrities alert to countless iPhones on top of lurking paparazzi. Rumors swirled of an impending breakup. Other gossip speculated that John was still in love with Daryl Hannah, his on-again, off-again ex-girlfriend and family friend. John’s friend claims that the fight originated with Carolyn calling John out for letting people walk all over him—they’d recently attended a wedding where he was seated next to a NYT editor, leading Carolyn to believe the bride was using John to get her wedding covered in the paper. The photographer who captured the fight has her theories on the argument, including a wildly speculative take that John was in a stormy mood because Jackie O’s possessions were being auctioned off.

We may never know the truth, but the photographic evidence is available for interpretation. I’ve written about how pictures inspire my creative process, and gossip can be an act of creation as much as transmission. While I won’t put forth any theory on what happened during their fight, a light went off for me at their dimmed, resigned expressions on a bench once the brawl had cooled. The shocked and tired eyes, the tender hug they shared on a curb with their dog. I recognized this raw place and found it more interesting than the rage that preceded it.

I channeled this recognition into writing a fight scene between a married couple in the book I’m working on. Sharing a short passage from my novel-in-progress feels both vulnerable and self-indulgent, but what is a Substack if not a vehicle to honor those impulses? The excerpt:

This mental game—who will apologize first?—is Maxine’s least favorite part of arguing. They’re both stubborn and proud, yet being the hold-out has no real rewards. When Maxine refuses to capitulate first, the twinge of victory is quickly replaced by an aftertaste of internal accusation: you are the bad communicator, the stoic one, the reason for all this heady discord. At the same time, apologizing when she feels like she has no reason to say sorry is self-abandonment, a little death. La petite mort, Maxine thinks, the French term for orgasm. Maybe they should just have sex in the Uber to shift the mood.

I have no idea if Carolyn or John considered sex in a New York taxi cab while they sat on that curb—but I’m grateful to their iconic faces for inspiring the thought.

Recommended reading: Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller, CBK: A Life in Fashion by Sunita Kumar Nair