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Maryam Nassir Zadeh. There are also
Instagram accounts now dedicated to
her, most notably @carolynbessette,
which was set up by Jack Sehnert,
design director of handbags and
accessories at Steve Madden.
Bessette-Kennedy’s greatest influ-
ence, however, can be seen on the
Duchess of Sussex, who has channelled
the style icon’s most recognisable
signature looks at various public
engagements, including the white shirt
and black maxiskirt worn to an awards
ceremony for war veterans in February.
The Stella McCartney dress the
Duchess wore to her evening wedding
reception last year was also said to be a
homage to Bessette-Kennedy’s own
wedding gown, after she described the
Narciso Rodriguez slip in a 2016
interview as “everything goals”.
“She was one of the most iconic,
beautiful and stylish women of our
time, who epitomised elegant, easy and
flawless chic,” says international fash-
ion editor Jayne Pickering. “I think that
her style came from an inherent self-
confidence, the sort that comes from a
strong sense of who you are.”
B
orn Carolyn Jeanne Bessette
on January 7, 1966, in White
Plains, New York, her father,
William, was a cabinet-maker
and her mother, Ann, an
administrator for schools. They divorced
when Bessette-Kennedy was eight, and
she and her older twin sisters, Lauren
and Lisa, moved to Connecticut when
their mother remarried. In 1984,
aged 18, Bessette-Kennedy enrolled at
Boston University to study a degree in
education. She was popular, and in her
final year appeared on the cover of the
“Girls of B.U” calendar.
The cheesiness of the shots reflect-
ed her sense of humour, say friends.
“Carolyn loved to laugh – hers was an
unforgettable, contagious, belly laugh,”
says Colleen Curtis, a former classmate.
“She was always ready with a wise-
crack. She greeted friends with a big
hug. You never doubted her sincerity.”
Bessette-Kennedy stayed on in
Boston after graduating and worked as
an events organiser for a nightclub
management company. Then, aged 24,
she went into the Calvin Klein store at
Chestnut Hill Mall to enquire about a
sales assistant position and was given
the job on the spot, reportedly because
of her resemblance to Elaine Irwin, the
brand’s favourite model at the time.
A sales rep then recommended her
to Susan Sokol, an executive at the Man-
hattan headquarters, who was looking
for someone to handle Klein’s high-
profile clients. “Carolyn was charming,
outgoing [and she] wouldn’t feel intimi-
dated working with these kinds of peo-
ple,” Sokol later told The New York Times.
Depending on which account you
believe, Bessette-Kennedy first met
JFK Jr. in 1992, when she was 26 and
he was 32, at a private viewing of Klein’s
latest menswear collection, but didn’t
start dating him for another two years.
Other reports had them meeting while
out jogging or at a society event.
Whichever way it happened, it was
clear that the charismatic serial dater
had at last met his match. “Carolyn
wasn’t John’s shadow; she was his
equal,” said RoseMarie Terenzio, JFK
Jr.’s personal assistant until his death.
When news of the romance broke
in 1994, Bessette-Kennedy became the
most famous woman in America
overnight, but she loathed being writ-
ten about and struggled with being
constantly tailed by the press.
She also refused all interviews.
Robert T. Littell, one of JFK Jr.’s oldest
friends, described her as “unhappy and
frustrated, like a caged animal backed
against a wall”. JFK Jr. had grown up in
the spotlight – the picture of him as a
three-year-old saluting his father’s
coffin at the President’s 1963 funeral
remains one of the most defining
images of the 20th century. So he strug-
gled to comprehend how she was feeling.
Despite the constant intrusion,
Bessette-Kennedy believed in the rela-
tionship and moved into his Tribeca
loft apartment in 1995.
JFK Jr. proposed in July that year,
giving Bessette-Kennedy a sapphire
and diamond band based on a ring of
his mother’s. But the following Febru-
ary, six months before they married,
she was filmed throwing the ring at
him during a huge fight in Central Park.
As the footage was broadcast
around the globe, Bessette-Kennedy
“CAROLYN WAS
ONE OF THE
MOST ICONIC,
BEAUTIFUL AND
STYLISH WOMEN
OF OUR TIME”
CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s
career started at Calvin Klein;
JFK Jr. and Bessette-Kennedy
on the red carpet in May
1999; and the style icon with
model Kate Moss in 1992.
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