9 Times Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s Iconic Style Foresaw the Future of Fashion

It seems crazy to think that Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy would’ve been 50 today. Fifty.

In my mind, she is forever young, exiting the chapel in which she and John F. Kennedy, Jr. got married, wearing a long white Narciso Rodriguez dress, her new husband grabbing her sheer white glove-covered hand to kiss it. Fairy tales aren’t real, but if there were ever two human people made of flesh  and bone living on this earth that could represent that fantasy, that would perfectly accompany a “happily ever after,” it would surely be Carolyn and John John.

The paparazzi took their picture every day and I saw those pictures in fashion magazines, and I imagined growing up to be the kind of woman that maybe wore those kinds of clothes. Their death in a plane crash in 1999, just three years after their storied wedding, managed to preserve their image as a golden couple, regardless of all the rumors of infidelity, divorce, and drug use that accompanied those pictures that ran in magazines every day (probably all true, but who cares? They never got a chance to become a reality so they may as well be fiction).

Their deaths also preserved her status as an icon of ‘90s minimalism. That “effortless” thing that fashion magazines are always talking about—she had it. That “minimalist chic” thing? She had it too. In fact, it seems that at least 80% of fashion’s current affair with the '90s, once you take out the grunge, and the sweatshirts, is all remnants of her style. The off-the-shoulder trend, the white blouse for an evening affair, the cropped flared jeans that some of us would give an arm and a leg for, she’s worn them all, and it’s not very hard to imagine her images populating designers’ mood boards. If CBK were alive, she would certainly be the patron saint of Mary-Kate and Ashley’s The Row, but would throw some Hermés and Celine and Lemaire in the mix with her vintage. You’d want to hate her, but you wouldn’t be able to. You would secretly look at Instagrams dedicated to her street style shots while eating chocolate chips on the couch as self-care.

It would be a great way to spend a Friday night.

In honor of her birthday, and her nineties-turned-timeless style, CBK’s best style moments, just in time to inspire your new year’s sartorial resolutions.

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