NEED TO KNOW
Former Calvin Klein employees are sharing their experiences working for the brand the ’90s when Carolyn Bessette Kennedy famously led the designer’s PR
Ryan Murphy’s new FX series Love Story, which revisits the romance between Carolyn and John F. Kennedy Jr., has prompted a wave of former workers to speak out
TikTok creators Kara Mendelsohn and Mary Beth Kelly are recalling what it was really like to work for Calvin Klein in the ’90s and how it compares to the show
Former Calvin Klein employees are sharing what it was really like to work for the designer around the same time as Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.
The late publicist worked for Calvin Klein until her 1996 wedding to John F. Kennedy Jr. In 1999, she died tragically in a plane crash at age 33, along with JFK Jr., who was 38 at the time. After Carolyn’s time with the brand was portrayed on Ryan Murphy’s new FX series about the couple’s romance, Love Story, ex-Calvin Klein employees have been recalling their experiences working in fashion in the ’90s.
In a TikTok video shared on Tuesday, Feb. 17, Kara Mendelsohn says she worked for Calvin Klein in the late ’90s after Carolyn had left.
“I just thought I would give you a few things that happened when I was working there that I think would send people into a coma now of what we were and were not allowed to do,” Mendelsohn says in the clip.
She goes on to recall that employees were not permitted to wear nail polish and had to keep their makeup “extremely minimalist.”
“Everyone’s makeup looked like Carolyn’s,” she says. “We had very thin eyebrows … and people wore very, very minimal, minimal makeup. There was no bright eyeshadows, there was no bright lips, everything was super neutral, and typically your hair was pulled back in a ponytail.”
She adds that jewelry was also required to be minimal and that “they would ask you to take it off if you were wearing anything other than something super simple.”
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Calvin Klein in 1992.
Fairchild Archive/Penske Media via Getty
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Mendelsohn also calls out one inaccuracy she noticed in Love Story.
“I had to laugh when I saw in the show that Carolyn was getting red roses delivered because that was something else that we were not allowed to have on our desks,” she recalls.
She continues, “Calvin was very strict image-wise and every office floor opened up to a receptionist that was sitting there with calla lilies on her desk. So there were always white flowers, but you were not allowed to have flowers on your desk that are not white.”
(It is noted in the show that Carolyn couldn’t receive the red roses because of Klein’s office rules about non-white flowers.)
She goes on to claim that employees were “not allowed to talk to” Klein.
“You were not to look at him, you were not to speak to him, you did your work and you stayed out of the way,” Mendelsohn says. “Going up to him and having a conversation was a really big no-no.”
Former Calvin Klein employee Mary Beth Kelly also shared her experience on TikTok. Kelly claims she worked “on the same floor” as Carolyn, though they were in separate departments.
While she says that they “didn’t have a lot of meetings,” together, Kelly notes that Carolyn was “so sweet.”
“She was so nice, she was so down to earth,” she recalls. “She would say, ‘Hi, honey, how are you?'”
She continues, “There are some people saying she was cold, she was aloof. She could not have been nicer. She was striking. She always looked incredible.”
Kelly also noted that Love Story was able to “capture the essence of the office spot-on.”
Read the original article on People