tiosmedia.info@gmail.com
She never wanted to be famous, but that all changed in 1992 when she met John F. Kennedy Jr. He was dating actress Daryl Hannah at the time, and the son of the fifth president of the United States is said to have been smitten with Carolyn Bessette , who didn’t seem impressed by his fame and was on a first-name basis with him from the start. After graduating with a degree in advertising from Boston University in the 1980s, Bessette had moved to New York to work in sales at Calvin Klein . “We both lived in the East Village, took the same subway to work, hung out at the same bars and restaurants… and we were so broke!” recalls Stormy Stokes, then director of the brand’s ready-to-wear department , in Sunita Kumar Nair’s book CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion (2023)
Stokes was a close friend and co-worker of Bessette’s: “She taught me how to style my hair: she would wash my hair, put it up in a bun a couple of times, let it dry on the way, and undo it when we got to the office. We couldn’t afford to have our hair done or dyed at the salon, so with these tricks and the clothes we were given at work, we got by.
In 1994, John F. Kennedy Jr., now single, was still thinking about Carolyn Bessette. He asked for her phone number, they began dating and got engaged in secret to avoid the public scrutiny that their relationship was subjected to from the beginning. In 1996 they said “I do”, also almost clandestinely, on a small island off the coast of Georgia: by the time the paparazzi arrived, they had already escaped to Turkey to celebrate their honeymoon. They were the couple of the moment, American royalty , the most stylish duo that inspired New Yorkers both with their tracksuit outfits when they walked their dog, and with their gala looks at sophisticated events.
