Until now, however, Bessette had never come to life on screen (only two very brief videos exist where her voice can be heard). Played on the show by Sarah Pidgeon, audiences on TikTok have gone into a frenzy with appreciations and tutorials showing how to style Besette staples like a white shirt, pencil skirt, and headband. Easy, right? Or…not.
The secret to timeless style
A black wool sweater, beige coat, and jeans are staples for those looking to copy Carolyn Bessette, but the items alone aren’t enough to come close to the same look. Her sense of personal style and taste are what helped define an aesthetic that persisted through a decade, much longer than a transient trend.
Designers such as Prada, Helmut Lang, Calvin Klein, Jil Sander, and Donna Karan all embraced the “less is more” ethos at the time, defining what we now call “quiet luxury” with looks that worked by subtraction, succeeding in the arduous feat of being stark but simultaneously glamorous and sexy. Today, brands like The Row use clean lines that are influenced by nineties minimalism.
Nineties minimalism
“Just as the Bauhaus dedicated itself to the relentless pursuit of pure form, today’s minimalists—from Jil Sander to Calvin Klein—aim for the same goal. Fashion embraces the new uniform,” Vogue wrote in the introduction of a May 1996 editorial spread shot by Steven Meisel and featuring model Stella Tennant. Free of the trappings and exaggerations of the 1980s, fashion had turned to celebrating clothes in their simplest, purest form, with invisible seams and clean lines, devoid of embellishments and in a strictly neutral, pattern-free palette. It was not just another trend but a real cultural shift, partly a reaction to the economic turmoil of the time.
