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Editor\u2019s note: This story first appeared in New York\u2019s issue of October 7, 1996. We\u2019re republishing it to coincide with the release of FX\u2019s television series Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.<\/p>\n
Among the disparate pieces of information released by Senator Edward Kennedy\u2019s office last week, there were delicious details of tailoring (the bride\u2019s veil was silk tulle \u201cwith a hand-rolled edge\u201d), ornithology (Cumberland Island, where the wedding took place, is home to \u201cover three hundred species of birds\u201d), and nomenclature (\u201cGogo\u201d Ferguson, the family friend! Narciso, the exquisitely named dress designer!). There was also biographical background about Bessette, the former Calvin Klein publicist turned\u00a0most sought-after woman in America, who has, in three or so years of being bride presumptive, managed to retain a remarkable degree of privacy, even as photographs of her comely, bikini-thonged bottom have been splashed across the nation\u2019s newspapers. But none of the snippets meted out about Bessette Kennedy (as she will now be known) \u2014 her degree from Boston University; her childhood in Greenwich with mother and orthopedist stepfather \u2014 appeared to provide the key to understanding exactly why she, of all women, should have been the one to relieve John Kennedy of his bachelor status. Indeed, not even the bikini-thonged bottom seems an adequate explanation.<\/p>\n
For that, it is necessary to turn to less-official sources, in whose descriptions Bessette begins to sound oddly familiar.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is one of those mysterious creatures that understands, on some deep level, mystical femininity,\u201d says new-media proselytizer John Perry Barlow, a longtime friend of Kennedy\u2019s who went to the wedding. \u201cShe knows how to handle men, like practically nobody I\u2019ve ever met. She knows where all the levers are, and she is very deft in her operation of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is a very strong one-on-one person,\u201d says Richard Wiese, who has been friends for years with both bride and groom and is a weatherman on Channel 9. \u201cHe always found her provocative; she always drew something out of him that other women hadn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barlow: \u201cShe has it in her to have a lacerating wit, but she restrains herself from using it. She has a way of cocking an eyebrow so that you know if you proceed a little further, you might find yourself in pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiese: \u201cI think most women, because they are sort of taken by John, just can\u2019t talk one way or another around him. But she is very strong-minded and very decisive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barlow: \u201cShe is very good at making people feel they are special and important, and largely because she means it. It was the same thing with Jackie. It wasn\u2019t some show that was put on for purposes of self-aggrandizement; it was a genuine appreciation of men. Carolyn is extremely female, and I think it is only appropriate that there would be a lot of voltage across that gap. She is hardwired to relate to people who are male.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiese: \u201cI don\u2019t think she has any problem hanging with him. If anything, he has more trouble hanging with her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barlow: \u201cShe is a lot like the woman who would have been her mother-in-law.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, a woman who never saw the need to hyphenate, once told Gore Vidal, as he relates in his memoir, Palimpsest, that her aim in life \u201cwas to be attractive to men.\u201d It would be inappropriate these days to admit to such an ambition, even to Gore Vidal; and Bessette Kennedy\u2019s stellar career at Calvin Klein \u2014 her rapid ascent from salesgirl to muse \u2014 is probably testament to her desire to impress Calvin the designer rather than Calvin the man.<\/p>\n
Even so, it seems likely that Carolyn would agree with Jackie that attracting men, and staying attractive for them, is a worthwhile skill. If this were not an age in which an unmarried woman must have a serious job in order to have an identity, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy might well have had a career as a beauty, the kind of woman whose energies, wit, and charm are dedicated to creating an aura of alluring femininity.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe managed [Kennedy] really well,\u201d says one person in the couple\u2019s orbit. \u201cShe played the whole thing really well, and she was very smart in terms of her approach. She knew how to disappear; she knew how to drive him nuts.\u201d In the paparazzi shots of the snuggling couple that were on the front pages of the tabloid newspapers last week, Bessette certainly appeared to be holding the controls: her face above his, beaming but still serene. Kennedy, gazing up at her with his mouth delightedly agape, looked like a yappy dog, uncomplicated and excitable, who couldn\u2019t believe he was lucky enough to be having his chin chucked. \u201cShe is certainly a challenge,\u201d says someone who has worked with her. \u201cIt would be hard for any woman to stay mysterious for
this guy, who basically can order it up. If there is anything she is up to, it is that task: never seeming easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bessette, described by an acquaintance as \u201chypnotically attractive,\u201d appears to be almost a case study from the currently popular how-to The Rules, a postfeminist, unabashedly retrograde series of guidelines for husband-catching, whose chapter headings include such injunctions as \u201cBe Honest But Mysterious,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t Talk to a Man First (And Don\u2019t Ask Him to Dance),\u201d and \u201cBe a \u2018Creature Unlike Any Other.\u2019 \u201d The authors, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, declare that \u201cif you follow the rules you can rest assured that your husband will treat you like a queen \u2014\u00a0 even when he\u2019s angry with you. Why? Because he spent so much time trying to get you. You have become so precious to him that he doesn\u2019t take you for granted.\u201d Says an observer: \u201cI think [Bessette] made [Kennedy] think she really wasn\u2019t interested, which was very smart. She can also flirt as much as he can. She is not shy; she is not afraid of attracting men. You notice that every time they got in a fight, she was very smart and would tootle off with somebody else, or insinuate that. She was cunning that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Bessette now must deploy her smarts in her new career of being Mrs. John Kennedy, a role that she will be expected to play at least partly in the public eye. In fact, she\u2019s already trumped the competition: The arrival of the princess of Wales in Washington for a fashion party at the National Building Museum last week was largely eclipsed by the attention granted to the new, younger, homegrown princess; the Kennedy wedding likewise overshadowed what was expected to be the famous-person wedding of the month, that of Christie Brinkley to Peter Cook. (That wedding took place the same day as the Kennedy-Bessette nuptials, in Bridgehampton, and was attended by reporters from People magazine and, as it happens, at least one of Kennedy\u2019s friends, Wiese, who knew nothing of his pal\u2019s plans.) The public investment in John\u2019s marriage to Carolyn derives not merely from the fact that he was the most celebrated bachelor in the world, but from the fact that their wedding provides an occasion for optimism about the institution of marriage, however statistically misguided that may be.<\/p>\n
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Photo: New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n
Kennedy and\u00a0 Bessette have done marriage, it seems, the way it is supposed to be done: They are adults; they\u2019ve spent a long time thinking about it; they come to one another if not exactly without baggage, then at least without preexisting alimony commitments.<\/p>\n
And unlike Diana, Bessette seems to know what she is getting into. It is a role, say people who know her, in which she is perfectly cast. \u201cShe knew that she possessed all these qualities to make herself a kind of an \u2018It\u2019 girl,\u201d says an observer. \u201cShe knew all these talents were going to take her somewhere, but it wasn\u2019t as if she was a career girl. She had social power, and this sort of odd mystery that eventually was going to land her a situation like the one she has. To me, when I look at this couple, it\u2019s a very simple guy; it\u2019s a very complicated girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Though Bessette now moves in fabulous circles, her celebrity was invented rather than inherited. She and her two sisters (twins, older than Carolyn) grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut; their parents were divorced when Carolyn was very young, and the children were raised by their mother and doctor stepfather (Bessette\u2019s father, William Bessette, was not present at the wedding, Barlow says). At St. Mary\u2019s High School, according to press reports, she dated Eugene Carlin, a school jock. Bessette went to Boston University, where she appeared as a pinup in a Girls of BU calendar and reportedly dated fellow BUers John Cullen, now a professional hockey player, and clothing heir Alessandro Benetton. She graduated with a degree not in a Jackie-like discipline such as art history or French but in the more utilitarian subject of education.<\/p>\n
After college, Bessette stayed in Boston and worked for the Lyons Group, a nightclub consortium, then started as a salesgirl in the Boston branch of Calvin Klein. But she wanted to come to New York, and New York, it turned out, wanted her. Susan Sokol, then the president of Calvin Klein\u2019s women\u2019s collections, was looking for someone to work with celebrity clients. The young Bessette seemed supremely qualified for the job. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t intimidated,\u201d says Sokol. \u201cShe had a wonderful ease about her. She was comfortable with anyone, and she has a lot of self-confidence, aside from looking great.\u201d She was moved to New York, and within two years, Bessette had been promoted to the public-relations department, where she handled PR for the collections and worked on Calvin\u2019s shows. She became friends with Kelly Klein and Calvin\u2019s daughter from his first marriage, Marci. and she became increasingly important to Calvin himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that she gave Calvin a lot of inspiration in terms of her personal style,\u201d says Sciascia Gambaccini, the fashion director of Marie Claire, who previously worked at Calvin Klein. \u201cI am sure she intrigued Calvin a lot, and inspired a lot of his campaigns, with the way she looked. She\u2019s a healthy, beautiful American, and that is what Calvin likes most in a woman.\u201d She was not afraid of expressing her opinions. \u201cDuring fittings, during these big meetings, some people would just sit there yes-ing everyone,\u201d says Gambaccini. \u201cShe was the one who came up and would say what she really thought every time.\u201d The muse was also capable of making fun of the master. \u201cShe used to always tell me these jokes,\u201d says a fashion-industry person. \u201cLike saying. \u2018Calvin just flew in here on her broom; she\u2019s charging around on her broom.\u2019 But she said it in a loving way, as if you said it about your brother or your parent. She was like Calvin\u2019s daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bessette first met John Kennedy, says Barlow, three and a half years ago. The first tabloid sighting of them was at the 1993 New York Marathon. Kennedy at the time was involved with Daryl Hannah, whom he was still seeing when his mother died in May 1994. Bessette, who lived in the East Village before moving into Kennedy\u2019s Tribeca loft, involved herself with other men, too, at one time dating the Calvin Klein model Michael Bergin. When Kennedy seemed less than committed, Bessette would play him at his own game.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarolyn was like, \u2018Fuck you, I am going to go off,\u2019\u201d says a member of their circle. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone but John believed for a minute that she meant it \u2014 like she was going to turn in John for Michael Bergin, or something \u2014 but it played on his ego.\u201d Bessette was anything but a pushover: \u201cShe is very sophisticated, and she plays her cards close to her chest,\u201d says a friend of Kennedy\u2019s. \u201cShe is the sharpest of the lot [of Kennedy\u2019s paramours], and I have seen them all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has a remarkable ability to find what it is in people that allows them to be seduced,\u201d says someone who knows her. \u201cI am not speaking in a sexual manner. She clearly knows how to find your weakness very quickly, and in a kind of scary way. When she is connected to somebody, the way she does it is by really relating. The flip side of that is that you can feel very undressed with her. You knew that she could turn and say the thing that you were most frightened of hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple\u2019s courtship, like Kennedy\u2019s previous love affairs, was one of high drama. A fight, conducted, unwisely, in a public park, was captured on videotape last February. In it, Bessette gave as good as she got, ragging on Kennedy for minutes on end. But fights aside, by last spring John was telling friends he\u2019d met his match.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were going out to play tennis,\u201d says Richard Wiese, \u201cand I said, \u2018So, when are you getting married?\u2019 And he sort of chuckled and said that she was his soul mate. He said, \u2018I think we are definitely going to get married.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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The wedding, when it came, had \u201ca fairy-tale quality,\u201d says John Perry Barlow. \u201cIn this very remote slave church, with no electricity, and it happened after dark. It felt quiet otherworldly, very dreamlike.\u201d There was a certain amount of glee among those present about having bamboozled the press; the trade of journalism was represented only by George editor John Kennedy himself. (The issue of his magazine on the newsstands on the day of his wedding carried a pink cover line reading LOVE & POLITICS, and included a letter from the editor in which Kennedy wrote that \u201cwhen both halves of a couple are high-powered, the public assumes their marriage is a calculated power merger rather than a love story.\u201d On the contrary, he went on to say, \u201cthe crises and isolation of a public life create a sense of shared burden that can bring a couple closer.\u201d) The couple had also hoodwinked most of their friends. \u201cI talked to John the night before he left,\u201d says Brian Steel, a pal of Kennedy\u2019s. \u201cHe told me he was going away. He didn\u2019t tell me he was getting married, though. I said, \u2018Oh, business or pleasure?\u2019 and he said,
\u2019Carolyn and I are going away to have some fun and relax.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The ceremony was, says Barlow, \u201ca good, warm, intimate, familial gathering \u2014 a bunch of
people that, if I had to start the numan race from scratch, I\u2019m not sure I could imagine a better 40 people than were there.\u201d Apart from, perhaps, the. hazards of inbreeding: Almost every position in the wedding party was, occupied by a Kennedy, from the flower girls (John\u2019s nieces Rose and Tatiana Schlossberg) to the ring bearer (John\u2019s nephew, Jack Schlossberg) to the best man (John\u2019s cousin Anthony Radziwill). Even Carolyn\u2019s maid of honor was a Kennedy: Caroline, her new sister-in-law, did the honors. Carolyn Bessette is fitting in, allowing herself to be absorbed.<\/p>\n
The looming Kennedy absence was Jackie\u2019s. \u201cI don\u2019t think Jackie and Carolyn ever met each other,\u201d says Barlow, who first got to know John nearly 20 years ago when Jackie sent her son to stay on Barlow\u2019s ranch in Wyoming. \u201cIt\u2019s a real shame, a real pity. They would have had a lot of respect for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, Bessette seems predestined for Kennedydom. There is, for one, the Carolyn\/Caroline issue. \u201cIt\u2019s embarrassingly incestuous,\u201d says Wayne Koestenbaum, the author of Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon. Koestenbaum also points out that the actress Jacqueline Bisset, whose surname sounds almost identical to Carolyn\u2019s, not only has John\u2019s mother\u2019s first name but played Jacqueline Onassis in the movie The Greek Tycoon. How could John resist?<\/p>\n
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