In Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, Ryan Murphy’s latest show on Disney+, we watch Sarah Pidgeon’s Carolyn Bessette Kennedy agonise over her nail colour. Instinctively, we know this isn’t idle indecision. Though so little is known about America’s answer to Princess Diana, one thing is clear: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was a woman who knew herself. Her hesitation over the scarlet polish wasn’t about aesthetics, it was about visibility. Namely, that she didn’t want it. And yet, as often happens to women who crave the privacy most of us take for granted, she was thrust slap bang into the brightest spotlight. It is here she has remained, nearly 30 years after her tragic death, alongside her husband JFK Jr. and her sister, at just 33.
The fascination with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, or CBK, as she’s often referred to, has only grown. Sunita Kumar Nair, a fashion journalist and author of the book CBK, which is widely regarded as the definitive account of her style, and who also consulted on Murphy’s FX series, recalls the early days of the book: “She just wasn’t on the ephemera of anyone at the time when I was writing it. And now it’s like she’s everywhere.”
