For Rare Images of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Follow This Tribute Instagram
Instagram: @carolynbessette
Founder: Jack Sehnert, design director of handbags and accessories at Steve Madden
Current location: New York City
Followers: Around 3,000, including stylist Mel Ottenberg
The gist: Sehnert was able to snag the handle @carolynbessette three years ago and make the account a thoughtful ode to the late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s style. There are some stellar fashion moments on the feed, including an image of Bessette-Kennedy with John F. Kennedy Jr. vacationing in the Hamptons—she in a turtleneck and corduroy bell-bottoms and he in a purple shirt, flame-print shorts, and sandals. Another is a candid Polaroid of Bessette-Kennedy at her former job as a public relations executive at Calvin Klein in a polo shirt and skirt. There are some paparazzi moments, too, such as grainy images of her doing everyday tasks, like hailing a cab in a black top and carpenter jeans.
Falling in love with the icon was easy: Sehnert remembers becoming fascinated with Bessette-Kennedy after watching Entertainment Tonight as a child in his hometown of Nashville and seeing her shortly after she married JFK Jr. in 1996. “Few people in fashion have a name that instantly conjures an image and defines a way of dressing. From casual to bridal, everyone knows what her name means from a style standpoint,” he says. Since then, Sehnert has been collecting images of Bessette-Kennedy. “I have countless scans from the New York Public Library’s picture collection on an old MacBook that I used for projects when I was in college at Parsons School of Design,” he says. “The New York Post should have paid her a nickel for every time they used her image, as well!”
The depths of the Internet serve as a rare trove of imagery, too: Some of Sehnert’s sources are a bit of a time capsule, such as WordPress blogs dedicated to Bessette-Kennedy that haven’t been updated in more than a decade. He calls them “incredible homages to her style.”
His favorite image is almost as iconic as her Calvin Klein wedding slip dress look: Sehnert managed to find a page from a 1992 issue of Glamour that shows Bessette-Kennedy wearing a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. (In the photo, she notes in the caption, “I like clean and understated looks.”) Sehnert has kept the page hanging at his desk for about five years. “It’s all yellowed now, but I’ve found scans online, luckily,” he says.
Since the account was created, people from Bessette-Kennedy’s past have chimed in: JFK Jr.’s former assistant-turned-author RoseMarie Terenzio; Narciso Rodriguez; and Kelly Klein, the former wife of Calvin Klein and good friend of Bessette-Kennedy, have all liked images. Illustrator and designer Jacky Marshall, who worked at Calvin Klein in the ’90s, recently commented on two photos of Bessette-Kennedy from Cumberland Island, Georgia, that she had taken herself. “I almost dropped my Diet Coke,” Sehnert says after he saw that Marshall had commented.
Like many, Sehnert chooses to look past rumors about Bessette-Kennedy and simply admire her style: Here, he decodes an image of Bessette-Kennedy, who appears upset in a black slip dress and holding a Prada backpack. “I found this in the New York Public Library’s picture collection from an old gossip rag. Nothing new to see a caption talking senseless smack, but look closer and that iconic Prada nylon is there!” he says. “A Prada backpack and a black silk slip dress. True off-duty at its most fabulous.” Well said.
