Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was the beautiful fashion PR who married the most eligible bachelor in America, John Kennedy Jr. The couple, and Carolyn’s sister Lauren, tragically lost their lives when a plane flown by Kennedy crashed into the ocean in 1999.

But Bessette Kennedy had an outsize influence on style and fashion in the 1990s that endures today, and her legacy has been celebrated in a new book, CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion, by the British author and fashion creative director Sunita Kumar Nair, with a foreword by Gabriela Hearst, and preface by Edward Enninful, OBE.

On Episode 5 of Season 4 of Rodeo Drive - The Podcast, Kumar Nair talks with Lyn Winter about her carefully curated and sumptuously illustrated book, which tracks Bessette Kennedy’s fairytale rise, starting with a job at a Calvin Klein store in a mall where she was, ”plucked by a corporate executive at Calvin Klein, and offered the golden ticket – come to New York.”

From there the willowy blonde with a knack for an ultra-chic and minimal “thrown together look,” became a fashion muse herself, in an era when American fashion traded padded shoulders and power suits for the understated elegance and comfort of Klein, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren.

Kumar Nair shares anecdotes about the celebrities – Kate Moss, Jennifer Aniston, Sharon Stone – and the great names in fashion and design who worked with Bessette Kennedy, and were inspired by her.  

She says the photographer Mario Sorrenti “remembers a time when they were sitting on the floor, talking about what the goals were for the advertising,” and corporate would want to know, “what does Carolyn think?”

She also talks about Bessette Kennedy’s powerful sense of self, wearing what pleased her despite societal expectations. When she married into American royalty, she might have taken to “wearing perhaps Dior or Yves Saint Laurent,” as well as the jewelry she inherited from her late mother-in-law Jackie Kennedy, also a fashion icon. “But instead she chose to wear Yohji Yamamoto and Ann Demeulemeester, and I think the only piece of jewelry (of Jackie Kennedy’s) that she would wear often was Jackie's Cartier Tank.”

Finally, Kumar Nair explains how Bessette Kennedy’s allure endures today, in part because of how she approached life and clothes, with discretion and simplicity. “I think there is just this demand for her because there's a dignity in the way that she lived and I think it's inspiring for people who didn't grow up with her to pick up a book and discover her and her world.”

Season 4 of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau.

Season 4 Credits:

Executive Producer and Host: Lyn Winter

On behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kathy Gohari

Scriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances Anderton

Editor and Videographer: Hans Fjellestad

Theme music by Brian Banks

Production Assistant: Isabelle Alfonso

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