I am anything but a dedicated follower of fashion.
If I have a fashion philosophy, it's never in style, never out of style.
If asked to identify the fashion icons of my lifetime, the first to come to mind on the distaff side would be Audrey Hepburn. The simplicity, the chic. Wow! Whenever I put on a pair of black cropped pants, I think of Audrey - and wished I looked half as fabulous as she did in a pair of black cropped pants. I'm about the same height, but, alas, lack her beauty and slender.
If I had to pick another, it would be Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Again, simplicity and chic. And what she did for the A-line dress...
I saw Jackie O' once, while I was clerking in Filene's, of all places.
What she was doing shopping in such a middlebrow store, I'll never know. This was in the early 70's, when Caroline was in prep school in Concord. Maybe Jackie was picking up undies for her daughter or something. She certainly wouldn't have been shopping for herself.
Anyway, I was working the stationery counter on the first floor when I saw Jackie, pursued by a gaggle of women calling her name, determinately heading for the exit, not making eye contact with anyone. What struck me was how beautiful she looked. I had never thought that she was especially beautiful, but up close and almost personal as she was tearing by my counter, she was. And she was wearing an absolutely stunning full length camel haired coat and matching pants. Definitely not purchased at Filene's, upstairs or basement.
On the male side, the fashion icons that come to my simplicity mind are Cary Grant and JFK, both the epitome of timeless, sexy style.
I have no clue who the present day fashion icons are. The Kardashians? George Clooney, who is sort of an heir apparent to Cary Grant, style-wise?
Or are today's icons no-name influencers - no-name to me, anyway?
Turns out that there's another category entirely, that of ghost influencer, a role that's apparently filled by the daughter-in-law that poor Jackie never got to meet: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, JFK, Jr.'s wife, who was killed in a plane crash, along with her "pilot" husband and her sister, way back in 1999.
By marrying into the Kennedy family - all that glamour, all that celebrity - Carolyn Bessette, who managed publicity for Calvin Klein, became an instant magnet for paparazzi. And an instant icon (which I guess is the old-fashioned word for influencer). In this role, she got to replace both her never-met mother-in-law, who had died a few years before the wedding, and Audrey Hepburn, who died the year before Jackie.
Carolyn Bessette gave off the same vibe: casual elegance, simplicity, classic style.
Although I didn't pay all that much attention to their goings and comings, I certainly knew that JFK, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy were something of the It Couple. And they were the It Couple even more so when you put them into a bit of historical context (which the NY Times has nicely done for us):
He founded George magazine; she had been a publicist at Calvin Klein. Together they embodied not only the next golden generation of a sprawling, mythic family, but also the apotheosis of the collision between fashion, pop culture, magazines and politics that defined New York in 1990s. Seemingly it was the last gasp of the monoculture, when discretion in both dress and demeanor was its own kind of currency and everyone agreed on who did it best. (Source: NY Times)
Fast forward and:
Little wonder that as fascination with that era reaches a new pitch, Ms. Bessette Kennedy has emerged as the ghost influencer of the season — one who has particular resonance as stealth wealth evolves into an embrace of more functional minimalism in the face of global chaos; disillusionment grows with the cesspool that the digital world has become; and the question of what exactly it means to be “American” takes center stage.I wasn't aware that "fascination with that era" had reached "a new pitch." The 90's???? But I'll take the NYT's word for it.
But there we have Carolyn Bessette Kennedy as the "ghost influencer of the season."
There's a book that came out last month that's a paean to the woman, who now has a set of Kennedy-style initials of her own CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion, that's a gusher to CBK's style. (There's another bio coming out next year. Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. Is enough never enough?)
And the fashion brand Sporty & Rich, which I naturally hadn't heard of, but appears to be Ralph Lauren on price-inflated steroids, has been running an ad campaign that's a salute to "some of the most famous paparazzi shots of Carolyn and John." Like the bike-walking shot. Is it live or is it Memorex? I believe that's the ad and not the pap shot.
Other brands are picking up on CBK-style as well, especially when it comes to the white shirt.
There were white artists’ shirts at Altuzarra, worn over full midi-skirts; crisp white shirts at Bally, paired with neat white pencil skirts; and asymmetric white shirts at Dior. There were long white shirts-cum-dresses at Peter Do, white shirts buttoned to the neck at Loewe and white shirts paired with the sort of boyfriend jeans Ms. Bessette Kennedy favored at Stella McCartney. That’s before you even get to the camel pencil skirts, another Bessette Kennedy staple, at Michael Kors, Gucci, MaxMara and Saint Laurent, to name a few.
No pencil skirt for me, but maybe I can iron that white shirt.
Ms. Bessette Kennedy exists less as a person than an idea.
Which may be a good thing, because an influencer who's a real person might expect to make a bit of coin, but a ghost influencer is just an idea. Zero pay, but zero demands. Maybe it is a good deal.
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