{"id":251058,"date":"2026-06-01T17:09:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T17:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/251058\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T17:09:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T17:09:19","slug":"how-love-story-found-a-way-to-recreate-new-york-city-in-the-90s-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/251058\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018Love Story\u2019 Found a Way to Recreate New York City in the \u201990s"},"content":{"rendered":"

FX\u2019s \u201cLove Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette<\/a>\u201d was a world crafted in muted, minimalist and romantic themes.<\/p>\n

Set in the 1990s, the Ryan Murphy production<\/a> follows the relationship of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. Production designer Alex DiGerlando hails from New Jersey and attended NYU; he knew the era well.<\/p>\n

More from Variety<\/p>\n

While building a world that was period-accurate, he also found places to take creative liberties. Here, DiGerlando breaks down the series\u2019 key film sets.<\/p>\n

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis\u2019 Fifth Avenue apartment<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The few photos that existed of Jackie Kennedy\u2019s apartment came from \u201cCooking for Madam: Recipes and Reminiscences from the Home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.\u201d The Sotheby\u2019s auction catalog following her death provided further insight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing apartment, and she has impeccable taste, but some of her design choices were a little at odds with what we wanted for the show,\u201d says DiGerlando, who took creative liberty in his designs. But he was constantly asking the question of how much to match it exactly versus how to \u201ctwist the dials that were our overall vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the furniture was an exact match.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tweaked the upholstery. She had a blue striped sofa in the dining room, but we made it pink and white striped just to keep it within that tone,\u201d he explains. Elsewhere, Onassis had \u201cbusy red-patterned wallpaper in her dining room\u201d \u2014 one DiGerlando\u2019s team decided to replace with a blush tone.<\/p>\n

John F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s loft<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

DiGerlando looked at loft spaces from that era when designing the space, leaning into plain white walls and choosing not to hang artwork.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a scary choice,\u201d he admits. But by doing that, it allowed the focus to remain on the actors. \u201cI think it paid off because when you watch the show as an overall piece, the actors really move to the foreground, and the artwork is them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tinseltown\u2019s golden era was an inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look back at classic Hollywood romances, those sets were built with a tighter budget,\u201d he says. \u201cBack then, they were called stars for a reason because they pulled the focus, and that\u2019s all you really need. So we used that philosophy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Calvin Klein offices<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Klein\u2019s headquarters took over an entire 17-story building on 39th Street in Manhattan, and DiGerlando used interior designer Joe D\u2019Urso, the grandfather of high-tech minimalism, to decorate the space with industrial materials and fixtures.<\/p>\n

When Klein moved his flagship store to Madison Avenue in the 1990s, he hired minimalist architectural designer John Pawson. \u201cRyan and I were both very inspired by Pawson\u2019s designs. He took minimalism to a new level,\u201d says DiGerlando, who kept a treasure trove of archival photos from the era.<\/p>\n

He also reflected the modern minimalist style Klein favored, with exterior floodlight fixtures on the wall, and gray sheet-metal industrial shelving, restricting the color palette to grays and neutrals.<\/p>\n

The Roxy<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s iconic Roxy nightclub doesn\u2019t exist anymore, so DiGerlando went to Brooklyn\u2019s Bushwick neighborhood to find Elsewhere, a much smaller venue with \u201cbig, cavernous space and high ceilings.\u201d That was enough for DiGerlando and his team to add swings, banquettes, disco balls and chandeliers, and transform a modern club into the 1990s venue.<\/p>\n

Panna II Garden Restaurant<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Before the series debuted on FX and Hulu, it was easy to get a table at Panna II. All that has changed
as New Yorkers and visitors now flock to the site.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the script, that was one of the restaurants that wasn\u2019t called out by name. It was just specified as an Indian restaurant because some of the dialogue related to John\u2019s time in India,\u201d DiGerlando explains.<\/p>\n

He looked at multiple Indian restaurants, as well as non-Indian restaurants that he could possibly convert. But he couldn\u2019t find anything that fit his aesthetic.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiraculously, Panna II still exists, and it pretty much exists exactly as it did back then,\u201d he says.
\u201cAlthough the owner says they ate there \u2014 I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true or not \u2014 but we thought it was an appropriate place. It\u2019s off the beaten track enough that you could believe that he would take her there to be out of the spotlight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The restaurant\u2019s busy aesthetic was an opportunity to break from the minimalist rule. \u201cThis is the inciting incident where they\u2019ve seen each other before, but now their spark is solidified,\u201d he adds. \u201cWhat better way to visualize that than in a cornucopia of exploding Christmas lights?\u201d<\/p>\n

DiGerlando had to work to make the exterior period-correct, and change the health food store underneath: \u201cIt was a considerable amount of work, but I\u2019m really happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Best of Variety<\/p>\n

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FX\u2019s \u201cLove Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette\u201d was a world crafted in muted, minimalist and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[97934,34627,59491,17165,21713,1066,9,24,55,54,56,6914],"class_list":["post-251058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-alex-digerlando","tag-calvin-klein","tag-carolyn-bessette","tag-jacqueline-kennedy-onassis","tag-john-f-kennedy-jr","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-ryan-murphy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}