Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

America’s prince JFK Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were ubiquitous in ’90s New York until their tragic death in a plane crash in the summer of 1999. “In the pages of the city tabloids during those few short years, Bessette was a daily soap opera, forced into the multitude of unforgiving tropes for public women. The scheming girlfriend; the coked-up vixen; the miserable spouse,” writes journalist and author Glynnis MacNicol in Town & Country. But little is known about what Carolyn was actually like. We’re joined by MacNicol to separate fact from fiction.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
What's the first thing you think of when I say
Carolyn Sett Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
This is you know, twelve hand news.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
But I do remember reading that their.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Relationship was such that she was in constant communication with
him and would call his office because you know, I
guess this was before texting and emails and things, so
she would call constantly, little check ins, hey how are you,
and even things like sharing what she had for lunch,

(00:40):
you know, like the early version of sending seventy two texts.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
In a row.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
I think that she was a normal person who got
in over her head. I think about my own relationship,
and I have been known to text my husband really dumb.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Things over and over again.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
And thank god, there.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Is not an assistant who's having to intercept this communication.

Speaker 5 (01:13):
I'm George Severes, I'm Lyarra Smith, and this is United
States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with
the Kennedy dynasty. Each week we go into one aspect
of the Kennedy story, and today we're talking about Carolyn
Bissett Kennedy. So Carolyn was JFK. Junior's wife of almost
three years until they both died tragically in a plane

(01:34):
crash in nineteen ninety nine, and JFK Jor was, of
course JFK and Jackie's only son. So let's start at
the beginning, Lyra, who was Carolyn?

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Well, what is so wild about Carolyn is that we
really don't know which version of her is the truth.
When she started dating JFK Jor, she was not a celebrity,
and overnight she became this huge star of the tabloids.
And that coverage was of course like pretty nasty usually

(02:05):
and only interested in the most like salacious and misogynistic takes.

Speaker 5 (02:10):
And JFK Junior had already dated like Sarah, Jessica Parker,
Daryl Hannah, Madonna. I mean, she was in this like
long lineage of women that the tabloids became obsessed with
because they were dating JFK Junior. Of course, the difference
being all those other women were already celebrities and already
famous and had like maybe a team around them, had
some sort of you know, experience with fame that that

(02:32):
she did not. So there's Carolyn, She's the new girlfriend.
And then meanwhile, JFK Junior was America's prince and people's
sexiest man alive, and he was sort of portrayed as
like a dumb hunk that Carolyn was taking advantage of.
And listen, yes, he did famously fail the bar exam twice,
but I don't think this media narrative was exactly substantiated.

(02:53):
So on the one hand, Carolyn is portrayed as this villain,
as this unhinged party girl and the tabloids. But then
on the flip side, everything that was written about her
after her death, especially the biographies that were written about her,
kind of go too far in the opposite direction. They're
like overly protective of her image. They try to overcorrect
and they paint her as this perfect woman that was
caught in circumstances that were outside her control. Or are

(03:16):
they paint her as this like fashion icon in the
world's most fashionable angel.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
And people to this day are still free to apply
their own assumptions onto her because Carolyn never gave a
single interview. She was very private and there are only
two clips of her voice that exist online, which is wild.
Here's the first one. At the Glamourous Fire and Ice
Ball in Hollywood, she went with cousins in law Maria

(03:42):
and Bobby Schweiver and told et she enjoyed herself.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
It was very exciting, wonderful evening.

Speaker 6 (03:48):
What was your highlight silight for working the entire evening
was spectacular?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Is no islight? Here's the second one. I think it's
sort of fabulous. I hope they're all sitting with me.

Speaker 5 (03:56):
So that's it. That's all we have of Carolyn, And
her actual words are almost beside the point here because
there are so many enduring images of her that defined
who she was to the American public. I honestly think
no matter how much she spoke, she would not be
able to escape the images that are burned into Americans' heads.
So we have Carolyn fighting with JFK. Junior in Washington Square.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Park, which is rough. Have you looked at it recently?

Speaker 5 (04:23):
I had not looked at it until we started doing
research for this episode, and it is. I mean, there
is something very kind of vintage tabloid video about it.
I mean, it's it's hard to be shocked by something nowadays,
but you know, you think people had a lower tolerance
for drama back then, but you'd be wrong.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Well, it's just like, yeah, it's like tabloid, but it's
also like almost like cinematic, like he rips the fring
off of her finger, and then the way she's like
pushing on him is like so inappropriate. Like when it
first starts, you're kind of like, oh, yeah, that's so embarrassing,
Like I've definitely been in a fight with a significant

(05:04):
other and it's been like an embarrassing place, and you know,
you're hoping nobody notices.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
But then it just keeps going.

Speaker 5 (05:12):
It does almost seem staged. It seems like, you know,
if you saw a video like that now, you would
be saying, those celebrities are just trying to get attention.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
That's true.

Speaker 5 (05:20):
It's very Heidi and Spencer looking. So let's sort of
situate ourselves in space and time. We are talking like
mid to late nineties New York City. JFK. Junior is,
like we said, the most eligible bachelor in New York.
He's this hot, well dressed guy. He's dating all these celebrities,
He's living in Tribeca, he's founding a magazine. He is

(05:41):
like the coolest bachelor out there. And he also is
not surrounded by security people. He is constantly biking throughout
the city. He's almost like a nineties version of Prince Charming.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
And then Carolyn was one of these people that was
famous without social media, but she kind of inhabited the
space of an influencer anyway, the way that she was
on the weekly, you know, grocery store tabloid magazines, and
she was kind of a representative of what this like gorgeous,

(06:18):
chic Manhattan woman looked like in nineties New York.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
Which is actually eerily similar to what many wanna be
Sheikh New York women have looked like over the last
few years, which is why The New York Times actually
called her a quote ghost influencer because of her outsize
impact on fashion and culture. So to help us make
sense of Carolyn's life and legacy today, we're talking to
journalists and writer Glennis McNicol. Glennis's latest memoir is called

(06:44):
I'm Mostly Here to enjoy Myself, and she's written about culture, politics,
and fashion for The New York Times, New York Magazine,
Rolling Stone, in a bunch of other places. But for
our purposes, the main reason we wanted to talk to
her is because of a Town and Country article she
wrote in twenty sixteen called who was Carlyn Bessett Kennedy?
The woman who married John F. Kennedy Junior remains a

(07:04):
one woman fashion cult and an enigma. All right, So,
glynnis you are here to talk to us a little
bit about JFK Junior and Carolyn Bissett. JFK Junior and
Carolyn Bessett as media figures, as tabloid fixtures, as pop
culture figures, as like you know, sort of ghost influencers.
As Vanessa Friedman called Carolyn in the pages of the
New York Times.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
That's a good phrase, it really is.

Speaker 5 (07:27):
And so I want before we get really into it,
I want to know you know, you write about a
very wide variety of topics. You've written to memoirs, you
have written stuff for the Times, You've written about culture,
You've written about fashion. But Carolyn is someone that you
sort of have returned to many times in your career.
And I wonder what you think that, why you think

(07:49):
that is, What do you think what draws you to her?

Speaker 6 (07:52):
Yeah, So I've written about a lot of topics, and
then in twenty sixteen I did a thing about Carolyn
Bassett Kennedy, which which my recollection was when extremely viral,
and I think was sort of one of the first
pieces to look at her as a standalone figure, and
you know what she represented and also what her life

(08:15):
was like.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
When she was alive.

Speaker 6 (08:17):
And I lived in New York when they were married,
you know, I arrived in New York in the late nineties,
shortly after they were married. And it's hard to overstate
the degree to which she captivated everyone's attention. I mean,
I really think you could walk around New York and
figure out everyone who was alive here at the time

(08:39):
by like the absence of their eyebrows, because everyone lost
their eyebrows within like a year of that wedding. You know,
she was just so all consuming and I think, you know,
it's been notable to me, like when we talk about herself,
and maybe I'm jumping ahead, but I think it's hard
to overstate now how shocking she was, how shocking her

(09:02):
appearance was in nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 5 (09:04):
I have the.

Speaker 6 (09:05):
Clearest memory of you know, the people who lived in
New York that this is pre the Internet.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
You know, New York was a much more.

Speaker 6 (09:14):
Sort of secular, sealed place separate from America. So I
think there was people in the fashion industry who obviously
knew who she was because she was head of public
relations for Calvin Klein, and there was people in sort
of the downtown set of New York new she was,
but nationally and globally no one had any idea who
she was. So they secretly get married on the island,
you know, off the Georgian coast. And that photo on

(09:38):
the cover of every newspaper the next day of her
in the wedding dress and him kissing her hand was
like a literal stop the press's moment. No one had
seen anything that looked like her. She was so new,
Like I remember watching a Sunday show, the Sunday Political Shows,
which in the nineties was like David Brinkley with like

(09:58):
Kochie Roberts and Sam Donaldson, you know, and George will
and they stopped the show to announce the wedding.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Is how sort.

Speaker 6 (10:05):
Of like electrifying it was, And then you know, two
weeks later, she appears on the doorstep in Tribeca of
their apartment.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Sort of like JFK.

Speaker 6 (10:14):
Junior does that very I think hopeful introduction of like
here's my wife, please leave her alone, which of course
you'll think caludicrous. Oh so I just asked any you know,
Bobacy and Batamon, you can give her she makes as
justment sometimes you don't really appreciate. And they step outside
and she had on those knee high product boots and

(10:36):
that tan Pradat skirt and that v neck and now
we look at it and it looks like like a
chic New York woman who maybe works in you know,
Vogue magazine or whatever. At the time, it looked like
she derived from Mars. Like you just it looked like
nothing the world had seen unless you were a person
who really paid attention to style and fashion. And in

(10:58):
those days when you did, you know, you're still getting
the runway reports, you know, four months later, and maybe
you're watching fashion television, you know, shut out to Janie
Becker forever, but like you're getting such a delayed version
of it, and it's such a niche.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Thing that to have something like that go global.

Speaker 6 (11:19):
Was just stunning, you know, and it rearranged the entire
wedding industry.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
I remember reviving in New York.

Speaker 6 (11:26):
And immediately buying knee high boots, like it was just
sort of like and I could not look less like
Carolyn Wassat, Like I was just like, you're talking about
a tall, thin leven with like straight white line. You know,
buttery chunks, the famous right. You can always tell when
someone lived in New York at the time too, because
they you say buttery chunks. It's like a password, you know,
it's like a code word for how our hair was described.
But like you saw all these women who were like

(11:49):
trying to embody this image of this woman who they
looked nothing, nothing like, and it was just sort of
just amazing and amazingly original. And what's so interesting to
me about the originality of it is how it it's
now like a timeless style.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
You know, now it just looks.

Speaker 6 (12:05):
Like like, you know, quiet luxury or in those days
it was called minimalism. But at the time it would
just felt like an electric like you've been hit by lightning.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Honestly, what were people used to seeing? Like what was
like street style before?

Speaker 6 (12:23):
Interesting unless you lived in New York, I mean what
your street saw it was like dependent on the neighborhood
you lived in, because of course you're getting this broadcast
like everything is so delayed. You're dependent on magazines and
if you're outside sort of the New York indie magazine scene,
you know, you're looking to Vogue. Was you know you
wrought I have entire issues of Vogue committed to memory.

(12:43):
You'd run to the magazine store, you'd get it in
the mail, and it would be the.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Thing you would have for a month.

Speaker 6 (12:49):
And I remember when w magazine launched or relaunched sort
of in the mid nineties with that bigger format, and
it looked it was so interesting because it had sort
of a different vibe and it felt edgier. And Kate Moss,
of course, was you know, the edgy model at the time,
and a lot of it was coming through music videos.
So you're looking at sort of the you know, the
grunge era of the early nineties, which was fun and

(13:11):
very you know, like Win on a Rider and you
know Ethan Hawk Win and not say anything what was
their famous reality reality bites. But so this comes along
and it's like well, and then of course she's on
the arm of JFK. Junior, who even if you're not
a Kennedy, you know, I'm Canadian and so I was

(13:31):
this was all coming to me and university in Vancouver,
you know, in nineteen ninety six, and like you have
a vague awareness of what the Kennedys mean, and he
had launched George Magazine. You know a year earlier, but
you don't really understand the vernacular of all this because
we did not have access to information in the same way.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
So you just start responding to all this much differently,
and like.

Speaker 6 (13:53):
Parsing little phrases in Vogue, like the early the opening
pages of Vogue were sort of, I guess, in early
version of street style, but they were really peopled by like.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Upper east Side social lightes.

Speaker 6 (14:05):
Like my knowledge of upfer east Side social lights in
nineteen ninety six is bizarrely comprehensive because they still wielded
power in a way that they absolutely do not know,
and so that I think because of that, she sort
of blasted onto the scene in this very clean image.

(14:26):
It's interesting to me that these three women that I
think dominated the second half of the nineties were all
New York based and all.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Came through Calvin Klein to some degree.

Speaker 6 (14:35):
Right, You've got Kate Moss, who was sort of grungy
but was making that shift in the mid nineties. Gwynis
came up, and again gwyn it's another person who was
much more people were much more aware of within New
York because she was in New York, or who went
to Spence marm when I lived in Williamsburg in the
late nineties. All of these group Spence graduates who were
sort of rebelling against their family by moving to Brooklyn

(14:58):
all had a lot of opinion about Gwyneth because they
rubbed shoulders with her at Spence at some time. So
you had like this insular world of New York colliding
with sort of a global awareness. But I think Carolyn,
more than Gwynneth, had a very like a strict almost
an armor. She shifted, you know, she left Calvin Klein
six months before the wedding, quit her job and never

(15:19):
appeared in Calvin again. Right like, she shifted and started
almost exclusively wearing Yogi and Prada after that, which is
a really mature.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Fashion decisions that you weren't seeing.

Speaker 6 (15:30):
I mean, Gwyneth is, you know, ten years to our
home years younger was much more in sort of like experimenting.
But they all came through this, you know, this Calvin
Klein machine to some degree. And it's worth remembering that
in the mid nineties, Calvin was the most powerful fashion person, you.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Know, not just an America, in the world.

Speaker 6 (15:50):
And you know those famous White offices, I think they
were at sixtieth and I want to say Madison, and
he like rumor had it that he had there was
like the beautiful floor at Calvin, that everyone had to
work on that flora to be beautiful, and like Carolyn
was ruling the roost and she was his muse. And
so there's all, you know, the insider gossip that you
would get you brush up against that wouldn't have made

(16:10):
no sense to anyone else, you know, outside the confines
of a rather insular world at the time.

Speaker 5 (16:17):
Sure, the Yogi stuff is so interesting because you sort
of you think of her as such an icon of
like a certain kind of preppiness, and then you realize
she's wearing yogi. She's wearing these like avant garde Japanese
lately things like on the red carpet of like a
gala or something.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, which she almost.

Speaker 6 (16:35):
Never went to, she like, but to your point, just
to stick with it with the thread, like when you
look at the transition she sort of went even with
her hair, like she sort of went through this sort
of care free, relaxed image when she was dating JFK. Junior,
and almost immediately overnight the dressing becomes very strict and

(16:55):
it's I almost I liken it to like an armor
like she was. So it's hard to imagine that even
with preparation, anyone's prepared for the kind of spotlight that
she had thrust on her and the cruelty of it.
I mean, that famous Newsweek cover story which literally dissected
her bit by bit and her appearance and what she done.

(17:15):
It was very I mean really think of the nineties
as progressive, and it was in comparison to what preceded it,
but it's really it's so regressive and just you know,
and you it's easier to imagine that she that closed
for her became like almost a literal protective shell because
she stops almost showing skin.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's like a big part of
understanding this place and time now is that we have
an idea, like we grew up with paparazzi shots being
like the norm and having I guess kind of this
like assumption that that's part of the deal. You're you're

(17:54):
signing up for this public life, and that means that
you have not just less privacy or limited privacy, it
means you have absolutely no more privacy. I mean, the
way that we Live Today with paparazzi like in trees
using zoom lens to like get actresses tanning in their backyard, Like,

(18:14):
I don't know, It's just there's absolutely nothing. And it
reminds me of one of the criticisms or talking points
around Harry and Megan is that people would say, didn't
you know what you were signing up for? Which it's
like not even necessarily fair in that respect because it's
you don't know what it's like to join the royal family, but.

Speaker 5 (18:34):
This is our royal family, right, and Carolyn was sort
of understanding what she quote unquote signed up for in
real time. Like one of the in our research, one
of the things we were reading about is like how
Princess Diana's death was so I mean, it was shocking
for everyone, but it was like so shocking for her
because she sort of saw her own future as she
was like signing up for this completely. I really want

(19:13):
to talk more about the fashion stuff, but I want
to take a step back a little bit and just
talk about, you know, where Carolyn came from. So you
know the three girls you mentioned Gwen at this Hollywood Royalty.
Kate Moss is obviously a supermodel. She's also British, which
always carries a short of glamour for an American audience.
Carolyn is neither of those things. Like where did Carolyn

(19:34):
come from? And how did she land in New York?

Speaker 6 (19:37):
An interesting side note to that, you know, Kate Moss
and Carolyn Bassett lived in the same apartment building at
the same time in Greenwich Village and when they were
when she was dating Michael Bergen and Kate Moss was
dating Johnny Depp, which I always think it's like right
next door to Mario Batally's restaurant whatever it is down
on just beside Washington Square Park. But Carolyn came from

(19:59):
she her mother divorced her father. I think she was
born in White Plains. They moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. Her
mom was a school teacher, her stepfather was a doctor.
She had two older sisters, one of whom obviously died
in the plane crash with them who were twins, and
both her older sisters were incredibly successful in their fields.

(20:21):
One is an academic and one was an academic or
a business person, and the other is an academic.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
And Carolyn, by all accounts, was you know, the.

Speaker 6 (20:28):
Popular girl in school who didn't excel necessarily at academics
didn't fail at it either by all accounts, but like
was not operating at that sort of high level, but
excelled at personal skills. Goes to university at Boston University
majors in childcare, which is sort of amusing, but also

(20:49):
as a grown up now you look back and you're like,
you see a person who's like, I don't know, sounding,
you know, like that sort of like that thing that
we might have all experienced, and who gets a job
upon graduation, had a mall in Boston working for Calvin Klein,
where she is scouted by Paul Wilmot I think, who
was an exec at Calvinklin at the time, and sort

(21:09):
of high tails it. They bring her to Manhattan because
they clearly recognize somebody who has bigger fish to fry,
and she she's quite young still right, She was only
thirty three when she died, so you'd be backtracked this timeline.
She's in her mid twenties, gets brought down to New
York installed as a VIP shopper for high end clients,

(21:31):
which I mean, I keep going back to this, but
at the time this was reported, I highly doubt anyone
outside the confines of a very wealthy strata even understood
what that meant. Now, of course we all have a
different language for this, but like she's waiting on you know,
Anette Benning and Diane Sawyer, and in the early articles
they would reflect on like you'd walk in and she

(21:52):
was a brunette at this time still you know, she
had like long, flowy hair and would wear leggings and
a white button down and everybody would try and want to.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Look like her.

Speaker 6 (21:59):
And she quickly rises up the ranks of Calvin Klein
exects from shopgirl to head of publicity who's running the
shows and setting all this up like at lightning speed.
It's really extraordinary to think that by the time she's
sort of twenty seven years old and within five years
she goes from working at a mall in Boston to

(22:19):
being the head of publicity for the most influential and
like hip and like cool, like Calvin's so cool at
this time and so energy, where she's like running these
enormous shows, and that is you know that I think
that speaks to a person who I think we all know,
these people who were meant to be in New York, right,
like a person who excels at being a New Yorker
and is you know, by all accounts, you know, quite

(22:42):
well known in the downtown scene, dating Michael Bergen, who
was the big supermodel. You know, there's that famous Candice
Bushnel invites Michael Bergen over to her apartment for one
of those early Sex in the City's columns she does
for The New York Observer and starts, you know, he's
the hottest guy, and you know, insinuates that they she
sleeps with home.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
If you go back and read that piece, that's quite
I think it's still on the website.

Speaker 6 (23:02):
But like so like she's she's in the zeitgeist, and
there's i know more has come out recently, but there
was all these.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
Varying stories of how her and JFK.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
Junior met, like he came in to go shopping, or
they met in Central Park and he was still dating Daryl.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
Hannah at the time, and then they dated a bit
and then they broke up. You know, like there was
a sort of you know, back and forth with it.

Speaker 5 (23:22):
And her and Daryl Hannah overlapped quite a bit, right.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
It was like in yes, because it was the first
photo of her and JFK. Junior.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
They're at the like nineteen ninety two Marasons, sitting on
a sidewalk, and then cut to you know, then Jackie,
I think, is diagnosed and he goes back to Darryl
who knows how many people JFK.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
I mean, he's JFK.

Speaker 6 (23:39):
Junior. I don't think he was a player necessarily, but
clearly not lacking for a lot of attention. So he
goes back to Daryl Hannah, and then I think it
gets a little cloudy after that, Like who's to say
that actually happens, But clearly he's compelled by her, right,
Like she's not necessarily chasing him in a way that

(24:00):
I imagine had to have been very attractive for a
person who was used to being chased. And I think too,
maybe this is common knowledge, but like JFK. Junior was
very much, very accessible on the streets of New York.
He rollerbladed or rode his bike everywhere. They notably, I mean,
for all the struggles she had after the marriage with attention,
they never left that Tribeca apartment which didn't have a doorman,

(24:21):
you know, like he had really rejected that Upper East
Side upbringing and I might think I might have written
this somewhere, But when I was a waitress and grown
into village, the chef who ran the kitchen, you stopped
at how nice jfk. Junior was. He would come into
the restaurant for like just stand at the bar and
have a beer and like talk up the basketball game.
Like he was very much tried to insinuate himself into

(24:42):
the day to day of New York. And even after
they were married, she would show up to dinner, you know,
dressed to the nine, stepping out of a cab, and
he would show up on his bike, you know, with
like you know, his bike lock wrapped across his suit.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
So you know, he was very New Yorkers really loved him.

Speaker 6 (24:58):
And how they eventually committed to one another, I think
he was under enormous pressure at that. It's funny to
think of now because we think of age differently, but
he was thirty or when they started dating, or thirty one.
It's like, why aren't you married, Jed, aren't you a
serious person? And you know that sort of thing. But
I think from when they finally got together, she moved
in pretty quickly, but she and they were engaged somewhat quickly.

(25:22):
I think that timeline is you know, who knows what
the specifics are.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
That trajectory is so wild. I feel like if it
was in a movie, you wouldn't believe that, Like it
just couldn't be, Like it would take you out of it,
and it is like.

Speaker 7 (25:40):
Also, we learned that in her high school superlatives, they
invented a new category for her that was the ultimate
beautiful person, right.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Which is so interesting to me too.

Speaker 6 (25:52):
If you look back at those photos, she doesn't necessarily
she looks like a suburban Catholic school girl with long hair, right,
she does stop you dead in your tracks. And so
I think when you hear superlatives attached to her, even
early on, you recognize so much of what was compelling
about her was in person and her personality and how

(26:14):
she made people feel in real life that sometimes was
not conveyed through the camera. And of course she never
gave an interview, only like four seconds of her voice
ever on records. So to extrapolate from those responses to her,
I think in it begins to make more sense why
he had such a reaction to her, and like why

(26:37):
that might be so attractive to him to have such
an a live person, as a person who was used
to being the subject of so much attention and who
grew up you know, I mean, he grew up on
ten forty fifth Avenue for the most part, right, Like,
I think that you can really see like attaching onto
the lifeblood of what she clearly brought, because you don't
succeed at Calvin or fashion in those days without having

(26:59):
you know, an enormous ability to be personable and deal
with you know, complicated, high profile people. Like really thinking
that through, I think I don't think she ever gets
enough credit for the success that she achieved before she
became you know, his wife.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Just think to think about how good she had to
be in what she did.

Speaker 6 (27:23):
And in that New York right in that highly charged
New York environment where people wielded so much power and
a not a lot of there wasn't a lot of accountability,
right like, to really operate in those in that world.

Speaker 5 (27:36):
I also want to talk a little bit about the
kind of like media portrayal of Carolyn. I mean, one
of the passages in your Town and Country article was
just that. I mean, it says you say, she was
quote forced into the multitude of unforgiving tropes for public women,
the scheming girlfriend, the coked up vixen, the miserable spouse.
And it's funny. I was the I was reading what

(27:58):
you wrote now a few years later, and I feel
like it was I don't know if if this was
conscious or not, but it was during this time. You
wrote it, during this time when there was a real
appetite for reevaluating like women in the nineties and how
they were treated by the press. It was very like,
how did we treat Monica Lewinski, How did we treat
Princess Diana? How did we treat you know whoever? Else?
And I was wondering if you could talk a little

(28:20):
bit more about like the kind of media archetypes that
she fit into.

Speaker 6 (28:25):
Sure, yeah, that time when I wrote it, you know Hillary,
I remember the date of publication, but it was when
Hillary was running against Trump, and I think we were
having a real cultural, you know, for lack of a
better phrase, come to Jesus moment about how so many
women had been put through the grinder.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Hillary included.

Speaker 6 (28:42):
On the one hand, Carolyn was introduced to many people
because her and JFT Junior had a huge fight in
Washington Square Park, I believe where it got like they
were pushing each other and he ripped the ring off
her finger, and like it looked physical, but physical, more
physical on her part than on his. And to your

(29:04):
earlier point about sort of tabloid press, the mid nineties
was the beginnings of that truly invasive tabloid press.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
And they got caught, you know.

Speaker 6 (29:15):
I think George Rush said, I don't remember what they
got for that video, but it was in the hundreds
of thousands of dollars in the mid nineties, and inside
addition ran it. And so to make that to emerge
into a public consciousness in that manner, I think was
something she probably struggled to overcome.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
In addition to that.

Speaker 6 (29:36):
It's I think necessary to recall that the whole world
had known had been introduced to John F. Kennedy Junior
as the little boy salutes his father at the assassination,
and that moment was so like, we are having sort
of similar reactions to Harry and William in terms of
the funeral procession, right Like you feel a protective nature
over them.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
And so it's like she emerged into a world with.

Speaker 6 (29:56):
Like a global mother in law, right Like, it's like
everybody has an opinion. And then in addition to that,
I think because she never gave an interview, which you
sort of understand, is a way to maintain control.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
She sort of is, you know, the Garbo.

Speaker 6 (30:09):
Ask in a way that she then becomes a blank
slate for culture to put assumptions onto. And where narratives
of women are concerned, we have still fairly narrow ones
that you can see playing out still, you know, and
you can see people embodying. So she is the you know,

(30:30):
the caddie angry girlfriend in the video.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
She then becomes the is she good enough to marry? JFK. Junior?

Speaker 6 (30:39):
Let's take her apart piece by piece, and by the way,
she's not ingratiating herself to the world in any way
that makes the world sympathetic. She comes out of a
Manhattan fashion world that is both appealing and mystifying, but
to the so called middle of the country, which I
think often gets a bad rap, is like a eat

(31:00):
and inaccessible.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
And you combine all these things with this.

Speaker 6 (31:03):
Very carefully curated appearance, and you don't have someone who
is projecting an image that make people want to be
protective or friends with her or have warm feelings towards
or you've both taken the sort of the image of
JFK Junior of everyone's prince Charming, attached it to a

(31:24):
woman who has no interest in making things easier for you.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
And it's like the comments.

Speaker 6 (31:30):
It was so interesting to me after the plane crash
that these articles suddenly emerged about, like these sort of
nice articles about care and they weren't even that nice
at the time either, but there was sort of these
sympathetic articles, and I was like, wow, it takes this
violent end to her life for anyone to have something nice.
And you know, I don't know how many close female
friends she had, but everybody around them clammed up immediately,

(31:52):
Like I think it speaks to both of them that
no one. The degree of silence around them by anyone
who knew them personally lasted nearly twenty five years, which
I think doesn't it's not out of fear, but I
think there was a in the people in their lives
did feel protective about both of them. So when you
offer people an outline of a woman and say, you know,

(32:12):
fill this up with whatever you think applies, you know,
we have very familiar tropes that we see out play
out over reality television constantly, right, Like she's sort of
a reality television in real life.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
And Diana was the same way.

Speaker 6 (32:27):
And I think Diana lived longer and began to wield
a lot of power from her position, using some of
those tropes to her advantage. But of course, Carolyn and
John were only married for a thousand days, you know,
like she barely had time as much pr experience as
she brought to that role. She barely had time to

(32:50):
sort of own it or find her way around it
before it was over.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
You can't win in that position, and it does seem
like she knew that.

Speaker 6 (33:00):
Has ever won in that position, Like when we look
at all famous women.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Jackie was loathed, you know, and she was criticized during
the marriage to the President.

Speaker 6 (33:09):
She was loathed obviously during the Onnasas marriage to a degree,
you know, I think with everything controversial.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
And you can expand this, extrapolate.

Speaker 6 (33:18):
This out to many more figures in Muhammad Ali, you
can distrapolated out to buildings, like we have such a
nostalgia for the World Trade Center. People hated the world
to the Twin Towers when they were built, Like it's
just the key to getting people's love is just to
survive for a long period of time until they can't
get rid of you and suddenly decide they like you.
And she was so briefly here and clearly was not

(33:40):
a personality who was interested in making things easy for
the world. And good on her, but I mean I
think it made things much more difficult.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
And you know JFK.

Speaker 6 (33:50):
Junior seemed like a reasonably nice person, but he was
also a person of enormous privilege who you know, lived
in this world his whole life. And I don't know
how much family support she recved around this experience, because
you're still coming at a time where it was like
fit you know, march to the be druma I think
similar to probably what Diana experienced with the Royal family
in a slightly different way, probably, but overwhelmingly so.

Speaker 5 (34:13):
Yeah, I mean you mentioned Jackie as another woman who
sort of was both built up and torn down by
the press. I mean she was also, despite all the criticism,
was a real international media start. Like I've talked about
this with Lira A. Loh, but my family is Greek
and during the Onassis era, like everyone in my family
talks about how big of a deal it was that Jackie,
Oh was in Greece, and that she was like she

(34:35):
like at some point, you know, you know, would say
positive things about Greece and positive things about the history,
and it was such an honor that she was in
the country. Whatever. But the relationship between Jackie and Carolyn
is interesting because well, first of all, there was none
they famously never met, but also there was this enduring
idea that part of what drew JFK Junior to Carolyn
was her similarities with his mother, like her being this

(34:59):
like strong willed woman and you know, independent and all
this stuff. But at the same time, she the rumor
was that she'd disapproved of the relationship. So what is
your like conception of the relationship between the two.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Did jack you have an opinion about Carolyn Massett? I've
I struggle.

Speaker 6 (35:16):
We know that Jackie was not, you know, over the
moon about the Daryl Hannah relationship, because as much as
jack John wanted to be an actor, Jackie was like,
you know, absolutely not, this is not the direction this
is going. I mean, I do think everyone has agency
over their lives, but I do think like on the
grand scope of how Kennedy' children have turned out, John

(35:37):
and Caroline Kennedy both turned out pretty well, and that
speaks to sort of Jackie's you.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Know, resolve in their upbringing.

Speaker 6 (35:44):
I would be highly skeptical if Jackie had any opinion
about Carolyn Bassett. I think he was still with Darryl
for all intense purposes while Jackie was dying. She was
diagnosed and died very quickly. I think it was like
six months from the diagnosis to her death.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
So I don't know.

Speaker 6 (35:59):
I think those are Jackie herself was such an enormous figure.
I think those narratives are easy for people to put
on in hindsight or even at the time as just
like easy narratives. But I would be skeptical if there
was any relationship. I think probably the fact she wasn't
a famous person and had a real job would have
been very appealing. And I imagine Carolyn the set probably

(36:22):
suffered for not having Jackies around as a sort of
guide or like an entree and that Lee Radswell or
protector exactly or even just like opening the door to
that Upper east Side society. And I think, you know,
Lee radswelld did do that to some degree or tried to.
But I think sometimes you know that book that came

(36:44):
out about Carolyn to set last year, like The Happily
Ever After Whatever's called. I always think that we don't
do justice to women when we take away that they
might be like deeply complicated and sometimes not very likable. Right, Like,
who's to say to be the person who takes themselves
from you know, the suburbs of Greenwich to the upper

(37:04):
echelon of Calvin Kleine and Mary's John F.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
K Junior.

Speaker 6 (37:07):
Who's to say the decisions you're making or like the
power You're clearly a person attracted to power who is
making powerful decisions.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
And you know, manipulative gets such a bad rap as
a word attached to women.

Speaker 6 (37:19):
But like a person who sees who's moving with intention,
and like taking that away from her and making her
seem like this sort of like golden figure, I think
really diminishes what is so interesting and compelling to her.
Maybe her EJACU would have hated each other, like who knows?

Speaker 3 (37:36):
Who knows?

Speaker 6 (37:37):
I think her and Caroline Kennedy did not get along well,
but who even knows.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
The nature of that? Right, Like it's it's so like.

Speaker 6 (37:44):
Carolyn was probably making choices too, and not probably she
definitely was.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
But it's also notable to me, like she.

Speaker 6 (37:52):
Had this entree into society, so called New York society
that she had she was familiar with because as a
VIP shopper and one with Colvin Klein, she obviously knew
all of these people. And she made no effort to
step into that role whatsoever, like not not joining a board,
not joining a fundraiser, not doing any of the work

(38:13):
that you associate with the Upper East Side, for lack
of a better term, and like her refusal to participate
in that also speaks volumes. Was it claustrophobia, is it agoraphobio?
Is it like I have no interest in this world?
Like what was she doing? She basically disappeared into that
apartment for three years. You can count, you don't need
two hands to count the events that she went to,

(38:34):
some of which were funerals. Like it's really intense the
degree to which she silenced herself after that wedding, Like
to go from being so successful to just literally disappearing
makes me sad for her, and like in a way
of like, is there are we talking about like depression
or anxiety in a way that we didn't have a

(38:54):
language for at the time, or all of these other
things that is complicated to attached to a person you've
never met, but like it was so severe, and then
you know, Candis Bergen had that theory that pops up
in one of.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Her novels, The Four Blondes.

Speaker 6 (39:08):
There was like a Carolyn Bassett figure in that book,
and who was complaining that the paparazzi never or magazines
never published a photo of her smiling, which is very true.
The first photo of her smiling like appears, not including
the wedding photo, appears in like nineteen ninety nine, two
months before they died. Like in what now that we
all have access to Getty images archives, you can see

(39:29):
that that's not always the case. That she looked unhappy
and like angry, but you can see there was choices
being made to attach this you know, emotion to her.
That Candice Bergen book, I mean, I don't have to
put this in the podcast. But when that happily ever
after book or print up, whatever the book was, that
it was the best seller, lestory came out and the
prologue was like I lived in New York at the time,

(39:49):
but like most people, I wasn't paying attention to Carolyn Bassett,
and I was like, I can't read the rest of
this book.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
You have no idea what you're talking about.

Speaker 5 (39:56):
Well, honestly, it's funny. We were like sort of brainstorming
people for the episode. And either you either have the
sort of like vulturous tabloid people that you know, get
off on gossip and whatever else, or you have on
the other side, exactly what you're saying, like this completely
intellectually dishonest, like a counter you know, like over correction,

(40:20):
where it's like she was an angel and she was
like the perfect woman and she was silenced by the media,
which is not also.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Not true, not true at all.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
I don't think. I mean, I'd be so much more
interested to hear. You can find it in Instagram comments
sometimes what's her name, Liz?

Speaker 3 (40:37):
What her name?

Speaker 6 (40:38):
Does all the sort of nostalgia Instagram posts, and she
did that podcast with the early Levy. If you go
into the comments of her posts, sometimes you can find
former coworkers at Calvin Klein who are like, yeah, she
was a lot to deal with, but of course nobody
wants to be the person I remember talking to, like
someone who went to college with her who was a
friend of mine who would never go on the record
saying stuff, but she was like she was like a

(40:59):
very compelling person, but also she was a lot to
deal with, and like that.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
As a grown up who's lived.

Speaker 6 (41:06):
In New York for a long time, you you understand
what that means, and you understand what who the people
are who succeed in this city and how they succeed,
and all due respect to those people, but those complicated figures,
particularly where beautiful women are concerned, do not translate to

(41:27):
the world at large in easy ways.

Speaker 5 (41:30):
Yeah, it's funny, like there's this idea of the eternal
unknowability of Carolinbasset. But honestly, I'm sure you agree with this.
There are so many people we know in New York
that are actually pretty similar or are trying to be
very similar. It's like it's such a type. I mean,
it's like it is a type of person I know
and I interact with. And it's like people that when
you first meet them, they're a little rude to you
and you're like, did I do something? But then you

(41:52):
start but then someone tells you, oh, no, she's just
like that exactly. It's like this thing exactly. I don't
hoe the book just like that. I mean, yeah, because
it's and there's actually something. Yes, it's calculating in a way.
And of course she's attractive power as you're saying. But
also people just have their personalities, and like some people
are more introverted, some people are more outspoken, some people

(42:14):
can help themselves and sort of put their foot in
their mouth like and there are just some people that
are this kind of you know, like Forloren Glamour.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
But that's just a great phrase.

Speaker 6 (42:24):
I also think New York rewards certain personalities, right, Like
New York is a place that rewards a certain personality type.
And also when you look at the physical transformation she underwent,
and this is before I mean botox didn't arrive until
two thousand and two or something like. This is before
we had access to all of these things. She underwent

(42:47):
a physical transformation at her own hands that is so
extreme within a five year period that what it telegraphs
to me is a woman who read the room like
as woman who is extremely good at reading the room
and understanding what it took to move through that room
in a successful way. You know, she went from sort

(43:09):
of loose long unbrushed brown hair and thick eyebrows and
moves to New York and in quick succession, like loses
a significant amount of.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Weight, her eyebrows disappear, her hair goes.

Speaker 6 (43:21):
I remember seeing her on the street once and I
realized it was her just because the shade of her
hair was so white blonde that you couldn't not look
at it, and then realizing that she thought she was
like I was making her nervous because she was like
I could tell that it was a woman sort of
like walking trying to escape, and I thought, oh, oh,
she's trying to escape me, Like I Like, she clearly

(43:43):
moved through the streets with a lot of like anxiety
at that point, but like she transformed herself so that
when you compare a nineteen ninety even once you started
dating JFK. Junior, you compare a nineteen ninety five carolmbus
Set in like thick nineties heels and whatever she was wearing,
to like nineteen ninety seven carolinba Set and they are

(44:03):
two different animals all together. And that fascinates me because
in some ways the tragedy of her to me, the
plane crash is obviously tragic, but the tragedy of her,
to me was.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
A woman who could not handle her own.

Speaker 6 (44:20):
Success, right, Like she set her sights on the pinnacle
of everything, reached it, and then couldn't manage the reality
of it, and then disappeared herself. You know, Like that's
all all of these decisions were her making them, And
in that sense, I think, like that's the tragedy, Like

(44:41):
you kind of want to go and be like are
you okay?

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Do you want someone to take you for a walk?
You know? That kind of that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Something that we did want to talk about, like especially
in terms of like the tabloid coverage of her, and
like this time in New York is like what I'm like,
I can't think.

Speaker 5 (45:17):
Of trying to ask about cocaine.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
I'm trying to ask about cocaine.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
I just like, because that's it's part of the story
around her.

Speaker 5 (45:26):
And it was one of the big elements of her
mythology and also of her as like an unapproachable B word.
You know, it's like she's always on coked, right, just.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
The way that you've just described and the way that
like her, the people who knew her described her transformation
at that time and place lines up with like someone
who's like getting into coke or being blunt about continuing.

Speaker 6 (45:56):
Yeah, so at the time, I don't know. I think
that maybe popped up here and there. But I think
that narrative was pushed after the plane crash, because immediately
after the prane crash, she got blamed for being late
to Jersey where to the the airfield or airport where
all the.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Private planes take off.

Speaker 6 (46:15):
So she was immediately blamed for going shopping at Barney's
or Berg Dwarfs for a dress and then making them late.
And that's why the plane crash, which is ludicrous as
we know it was JFK. Junior's fault in every way imaginable.
But that that and like and also she was sitting
at home doing lines of coke. And I think because
of that, I never took those things all that seriously,
because they were so wrapped up in this sense of like,

(46:37):
how do we keep him pure? And like what else
can we load onto this woman who can't speak for herself.
In hindsight understanding sort of you know, having a better
understanding of how certain cultures in New York work, it
wouldn't surprise me. So I think she was a cocaine addict.
I don't think she was a cocaine addict in the

(46:58):
way that we understand. I imagine she recreationally used cocaine
and maybe at times a lot of it, and also
knowing how the fashion industry works and like the community she.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Was exposed to.

Speaker 6 (47:11):
But I don't ever get the sense that, like, I'd
be surprised if he would marry an addict, And you
don't ever get the sense from her that she's like
an addict in the way that you can look at
people certainly and be like, oh, there's a problem going
on there. Even her appearance, like her appearance was so intentional,
and yes, parts of it you can be like, wow,
maybe I's doing by a lot of coke. But but

(47:32):
I don't get it the sense that like coke was
the thing that was ruining her life.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
It sort of seemed like part of the way.

Speaker 6 (47:38):
That you operated in those worlds at that time. Yeah,
and then if you think she's sitting home alone, she
literally sat home alone for years, Like imagine having that
social life and then at cutting it off completely and
how lonely that must have been, and how crazy making
that must have been, Like what are you doing?

Speaker 3 (47:55):
By yourself. Are you going to do a lot of coke?

Speaker 6 (47:56):
I don't know, You're probably going to take antidepressants, right,
Like we're probably talking more the dolls then we are
hard drugs.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
But used to say sure, I mean I think that's
a thing.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, It's like, I don't there's nothing about her to
me that screams attic. It's more just like being kind
of fur real about what that lifestyle would have been.
Would she even would have been around, because you don't
think that JFK.

Speaker 6 (48:21):
Junior was a like I don't think he was ever
a person that was highly into drugs.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
But I just think like he came up in eighties
in New York.

Speaker 6 (48:28):
She arrived in New York as it was transitioning into
early nineties. In that world, I have to assume they're all.
I mean, she smoked, you know, she was a smoker,
though you almost never saw her with a cigarette and
hand in public, certainly after they were married. But he
was a smoker, and like everyone was a smoker. You know,
smoking wasn't illegal in bars until the turn of the
last century. It was like these things were not that
big a deal. And I also think like that culture

(48:51):
again was such a sealed one that even you remember
when Kate Moss got caught doing lines of coke, you know,
by the tabloids in like two thousand and five or something,
even that felt shocking on sort of like a public scale,
even though if in those worlds, it was probably the
least shocking thing possible, right.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Yeah, I mean yeah, there was a I remember I
think it was like possibly Spencer pratt By. I need
to double check this, but just like talking about how
before smartphones, celebs would just be doing coke in the.

Speaker 5 (49:21):
Club completely, I mean literally, like Jennifer Aniston has talked
about that, you don't have to be some bad boy.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
He is somebody who's so like vocal about like, let
me tell you what ruined everything.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
I think Gwyneth has recently said that too.

Speaker 5 (49:40):
It was like maybe it was Gwyneth, It wasn't, It wasn't, Yes.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
I'm sure everybody.

Speaker 6 (49:46):
I mean, I just remember there being coke everywhere, and
I was not operating at that level by any means.
Like I was hanging out at some of the I
knew the dormant at a couple of like the hot
clubs at that time, there was just cocaine literally everywhere
it did not seem and then you have to imagine,
like extrapolate that to backstage at a fashion show where
everyone has to be high energy. I'm sure that was

(50:06):
part of her life, but I never never, even when
she looked unhappy or like she was thin, like, I
never there was never this sense of like even the
Kate Moss heroin Chic, there was not a sense of
addiction going on there. And when those when that sort
of popped up again, it was like in a way
that felt really dirty and like as a way to
delegitimize or to make sure that JFK.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Junior emerged from this scot free right, like with no responsibility.

Speaker 5 (50:32):
Yeah. Now, I think honestly, one of the most compelling
sort of elements of what you're saying is this idea
that the media phenomenon that was Carolyn Bessett was a
symptom of downtown New York culture suddenly being thrust on
the national stage. Like it's so clear to me, and
I had never thought about it like that, Like so
these things that aren't as big of a deal, you know,

(50:52):
a stunning, beautiful woman like walking on the street, like
someone potentially not smiling that much when doing a little
bit of cocaine on a Friday night. Suddenly it's like
you have to be like watching the nightly news and
having an opinion about it as just like a normal
American person completely.

Speaker 6 (51:09):
And he was such an easily like he was so
easily digestible, right, he was like a happy barbecue guy
who liked to take is always with being photographed with
his shirt off at the beach. Who's like biking around
New York And suddenly she appears and you're just.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Like, you're right.

Speaker 6 (51:23):
She's like a manifestation of Manhattan in a way that
is like, I mean, New York is an idea. And
the reason one of the reasons I think she's persisted
for so long is because we never get tired of
New York.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
But in the moment, it's.

Speaker 6 (51:35):
Like so jarring and it's hard for people to remember.
But prior to September eleventh, New York was its own
and particularly in the late nineties when la crime dropped
and there was so much money and it was so
glamorous and like it was the center of the world.
It was also very insular and very separate from the
rest of the country, and there wasn't a lot off.

(51:56):
Like I remember after nine to eleven, all the love
that was directed to New York from the rest of
the country felt jarring because it did not have it
was not while it was a global city, it was
not accessible in the way that it is it became
after nine to eleven is like everyone's property and and
so you would come, you would you would come to.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
New York to experience New York and it was.

Speaker 6 (52:16):
So addictive and compelling in it and but like the
vernacular of New York was not globally.

Speaker 5 (52:23):
Yeah, and it wasn't like relatable. I remember, I remember
that switch to like post nine to eleven, from from
New York being a beacon of you know, sin and
power to suddenly being emblematic of the American spirit, like
as though, like this is what America is. It's New
York and specifically sorry, but like Wall.

Speaker 6 (52:40):
Street exactly like a skyscraper, a skycade that everyone hated, right,
like the World Trade Center was not.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
And also Windows on the World was. I remember going
to it once.

Speaker 6 (52:52):
It was like where corporate corporations had their parties and
where like it was not like it was just it
was a place that I think was different from how
it's remembered in ways that you know, are irrelevant to
how we think of the two of them in that moment,
and that the jagged edges of her were, as you say,
like the jagged edges of New York.

Speaker 5 (53:12):
Yeah. All right. So one of the things I had
sort of referenced when we were introing you is this
term that Vanessa Friedman used in a twenty twenty three
Times piece about Carolyn Bessett, where she called her a
ghost influencer, which I think in twenty twenty three was
especially relevant because that was when, if people remember, you know,

(53:34):
the term quiet luxury was like trending on TikTok, and
you would hear people, you would hear truly like random
twenty two year olds talking about stealth wealth, and it
was very sort of jarring that suddenly this was like
the big trend. It was when I feel like the
row was really having a moment, and you know, people
were sort of like getting back into kind of like
a minimalist, preppy aesthetic, clean white shirts and whatever. And

(53:57):
so I would love to know, like, in your opinion,
what the trajectory of the Carolyn Besset aesthetic has been,
like it was huge in the late nineties early two thousands,
and then you were saying it has sort of like
made a comeback in the last few years.

Speaker 6 (54:15):
Well, I think right at the end of the nineties,
you know, Sex and the City arrives, right like the
Sex and the City premiered in halfway through nineteen ninety eight,
but no one began watching it for real until nineteen
ninety nine. And they had to actually in the second
season remove a JFK. Junior reference because it aired two
weeks before the plane crash, and then they had to
replace it when Samantha gets back into the socialites good

(54:38):
graces by doing the gardening work. If you want, if
you find an original clip of that, it's JFK. Junior
who gets her back in and they had to change
it to Leonardo DiCaprio two weeks later because the plane
crash happened because it aired before that. So Sex and
the City arrives as a cultural force right as Carolyn
Besset exits, and the Sex and the City and Carrie
in particular is opulence. And I think, you know, when

(54:59):
we I think it feels normal now, but I really
attribute Sex and the City and the sort of manuche
of fashion, this obsession with the minuchet of fashion to
sex in the city, where you start picking apart the
different manolos and you start iding all of these small things.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
And it's like more and more and more. You know,
Carrie would leave the house dress she was exact, even though.

Speaker 6 (55:20):
Sarahjusca Parker datd JFK Junior prior to ball this like
there's like a there's an opulence to the figure of
Carrie Bradshaw.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
And then simultaneously you have arriving in full force.

Speaker 6 (55:32):
In that book that just came out, Girl on Girl
by Sophie Goilbert really gets into this of like the
Britney Spears youth culture of low.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
Slung genes, and.

Speaker 6 (55:44):
He remember all these people's names, but like that's sort
of like Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton ghost appearance and then
Josey Cuture completely and it's very culture begins to skew
to these very young girls. These teen girls esthetic very
over sexualized, cheap in a way I think that we

(56:06):
can say even if the clothes themselves weren't cheap. And
you know, September eleventh was a real sort of before
and after moment and these people start to emerge in
the aftermath of that. And then what I really think
is the before and after moment is Facebook arrives when
was publicly accessible, So suddenly you have the beginning of
social media that's arriving in this moment where you've got

(56:27):
all these young girls and with their sort of tacky outfits.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Is what is getting pushed out.

Speaker 6 (56:33):
It's what it sort of starts moving into magazines And
how much space are you giving to Carolin Basett and
the pages of magazines before we had social media? Right Like,
there's only so much space that's going You even see
Gwyneth's style, she leaves behind, you know, the Calvin Klein
era and starts moving into whatever she was doing next
to is pre goop, and then Kate Moss.

Speaker 3 (56:53):
Moves into her real vintage era.

Speaker 6 (56:55):
So you're seeing, like all these figures that have held
our attention go off into different routes at a time
that social media begins to allow us to take more
and more pictures of ourself. And what I think happened
with Carolyn Bassett, the Row takes a lot of inspiration
from her.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
So I don't think.

Speaker 6 (57:10):
These two things are disconnected, but I think enough time
passed and she disappeared from the culture to such a
degree that when I pitched that story to Town and Country,
they were sort of like, oh, this could be interesting
because no one knows who she is anymore, right Like
they had disappeared from a cultural vernacular in a way,
including JFK.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Junior that I think it.

Speaker 6 (57:30):
Allowed a new generation that now has access to far
more information and you know, the row to feel like
they discovered her, right like she can be a discovery
now as opposed to like a permanent the same way
I see people discover that Gwyneth Paltrower and Brad Pitt
ever dated.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
I'm always like, how is that not common knowledge?

Speaker 6 (57:50):
But you know, I'm sure I did that with my parents' generation, right,
Like you just need that like that sense of like, oh,
I've just discovered this person.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
Did you ever know about this person?

Speaker 6 (58:00):
And then have the same reaction to her appearance that
so many of us had to the original And if
you think about that timeline, like that's fifteen or sixteen
years that have passed, there's a completely different media environment.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
Culturally, we are re.

Speaker 6 (58:13):
You know, addressing, as you said, all these women in
the late nineties who got such a shitty ride. And Gwynneth,
of course and now is in her growner years, who's
now amount of phrases buenapulta was introduced into our Alexicana's
really fascinating, but like she begins to introduce quiet luxury.
So I think all of these things sort of like

(58:34):
the timing of it has propelled her back into the
culture in a way that I was very sensitive to
because she occupied, because she was so all consuming at
a particular point when I would be sensitive to when
she would re emerge, because I was like, oh, it's
not just like other people know who she is, like
you know, in that sense, and so I was aware

(58:54):
of it. And and she's only I think in the
last five years that has.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Shifted into overdrive.

Speaker 6 (59:00):
You know, her clothing now gets auctioned for thousands of
dollars that would not have been possible fifteen years ago.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
No one would have paid at ten.

Speaker 6 (59:06):
I mean, you would have had a small subset of
like ten people myself included, with no money who would
have been like, oh, it'd be interesting to see that
Yogi dress that I was always obsessed with, you know,
like in real life or what was how you know
what her size actually was, the way we're always obsessed
with those things, but like that's selling for hundreds of
thousands of dollars right now, and so I just think

(59:27):
that it was the disappearing act of her culturally that
allowed her to emerge as a discovery at a moment
where we have cycled back to sort of minimalism or
what wealth looks like, because now we're so exposed to
people's wealth through social media, it becomes like a game
of like can you hide your wealth through wealth? You know,

(59:48):
whoever else you want to describe quiet luxury or Gwynneth
or Gwyneth we're still living with Gwyneth is like an
ever was just never going away.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Yeah, it's like the blank baseball cap on successions, like
how yes, the extremely expensive, as plain as possible, as
simple as possible.

Speaker 6 (01:00:09):
And in terms of like fashion moments coming, I remember,
you know, I was a child of the eighties and
in the mid to late eighties, the nineteen fifties as
a culture became you know, maybe because back to the future,
but like I remember going to my mom and being like,
have you ever heard of a poodle skirt? And of
course my mother was a teenager in the nineteen fifties
and she was like, come with me to the basement, child,
and like pulled out of her clothes. So I think

(01:00:30):
it's normal for each generation to go back, and we're
just we're operating at such an accelerated rate now that
fifteen years can feel like a lifetime, and when I
was a kid, it was thirty years.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
And you know, if you.

Speaker 6 (01:00:41):
Read about how you know, the fashion icons of the
seventies were dressing, they were all finding nineteen twenties vintage
clothing to wear. So it's like we're all just tapping
back to the past as you know, things that we
can say we discover, and it's just happening more quickly.
And again, the fact she never talked allows people to
attribute mystery to her and like endless, endless assumptions and

(01:01:02):
fascination in a way that probably would not have held
up had she not died.

Speaker 5 (01:01:08):
You know, it's funny. I wanted to ask you, as
a sort of final question, if there is anyone in
today's celebrity landscape that you think is like our Carolyn Besset.
And when as you were talking, I was like, this
is a stretch, but honestly, when you think about how
the Olsen Twins never speak, there is something and they're
actually like recreating that aesthetic. There's something about them that

(01:01:30):
is almost approaching, you know, that kind of vibe.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
I've been thinking about them all day because you know,
my experience of the comparison of the like Paris Hilton
era to like the Carolyn Bassett and the Gwyneth Paltrow
is that to me as a kid, I thought, well,
Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, that's like what like cool like

(01:01:57):
older teens, young twenties where and then Gwyneth patro is
what an adult woman wears like a you know, And
I didn't realize I think so much, how like how
much of that disappeared or I guess contextualized how much
of that disappeared during that time, like that it was
not sharing space, it was gone. And I am like

(01:02:18):
the exact I think I'm two years younger than the
Olsen Twins, so I feel like I'm the exact age
that I have idolized every single thing they have ever
done in their entire lives, every decision they have made,
every like change they have made to their appearance.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
And they were my obsession at that time.

Speaker 5 (01:02:37):
It's funny because they were such a big part of
like boho chic, which was as Glennis as you said,
like the previous that was sort of like during the
Paris Hilton Rachel Zoe era, and then they were the
ones who transitioned the culture into into quiet luxury. But anyway,
I see your point.

Speaker 6 (01:02:55):
When I was no, no, I think you're making a
good point, I would say the Olsen Twins I was.
I'm not sure I was too old for Full House,
but I remember my sisters a year and a half younger.
Her friends all had a crush on John Stamos in
Full House like that, and Full House always bored me,
and I always associated the Olsen Twins with the two
cute little kids on a sitcom that I thought was dumb,

(01:03:16):
and so it was a long time before I looked
at them as serious people, and I mean far too long,
to the point where I was like, I don't understand
why people are even interested in the Olsen Twins, even
after they started the row, and that just goes back
to how I was first introduced to them in that
sort of eighties pop culture. But I do think you're

(01:03:39):
right about the space that they occupy and it also
makes me very sad. Then this Kate Moss sort of
occupied the space too, that the women who last the
longest as objects of fascination are the ones who don't speak, right,
Jackie Kennedy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Was similar to that.

Speaker 6 (01:03:55):
Diana spoke eventually, but to some degree that early shy
die nature, Like we really Greta Garbo is still an
iconic figure, Like we really really reward women for being quiet,
and that makes me sad, right Like, of course, then
we have Gwyenneth who never shuts up, and she seems
to be doing fine, so she's the flip side of that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
She really is unique in that way is the to
maintain a level of mystery while legitimately having like fourteen
media properties at any given time.

Speaker 6 (01:04:23):
And when we're talking abeople who've lasted long enough to
outgrow the hate I have had. Again, you can find
women who are in late nineties New York who like
all hate Gwyneth the way later generations hated Anne Hathaway.
I've now come around where I'm just like Gwyneth. You're
still here, like like I bad like you?

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Who am I to criticize? Like you are clearly a
genius on something.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Well. I also I remember as like, I mean, I
must have been a teen major because there was I
remember when the Olsen Twins hosted SNL and it was
a huge cultural moment for me and my friends, and
we all watched it together and it was the most
that you saw them, uh, you know, like talk about
themselves and talk about and they did this sketch where
there's the Mary Kate perfume and the Ashley perfume and

(01:05:08):
how they like have to occupy these opposite traits for
women in order.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
And I remember I learned for the first time I
ever heard the quote no is a full sentenced for them.

Speaker 6 (01:05:23):
I mean, talk about two people who have like transformed
themselves their geniuses too. I just I don't personally they
never held my attention, but that is entirely generational and
probably says more than my like interest in certain degrees
of sophistication.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
But yeah, no, I think you're right that they also.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
I mean, also everything you everything that you've said about
Carolyn's intentionality, her conscious choices, and her like educated choices.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Uh, I feel like it's also you could apply to them.
So yeah, George, you didn't talk to me.

Speaker 5 (01:06:02):
Well, Glenna's This has been an absolute delight. I have
to say I could write a thesis on Carolyn Misset
for this conversation.

Speaker 6 (01:06:09):
I'm happy to hear it because she always fascinates me,
and there was a long time when people were like why, So.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
It's been interesting to see her return.

Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
I was shocked when I saw the date on that article.
I really you really were ahead of your time.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
Want something?

Speaker 5 (01:06:24):
I think that's it?

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
Yeah, thank you so much, Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 (01:06:27):
This was really lovely. Guys.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
This has been a delight. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
That's it for this week's episode.

Speaker 5 (01:06:33):
And next week we have our first entry of the
Kennedy Movie Club.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
What's a month.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
We're going to watch a movie that is based on
a Kennedy story, and the first one is JFK.

Speaker 5 (01:06:47):
That's right, Oliver Stone's JFK. It's not the movie you
think it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Is, so subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Thanks Kennedy every week.

Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
Thanks for listening the book

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):
Bo a Woman