Fashion brands latch on to Love Story as fans demand the Bessette look

“It’s giving Carolyn Bessette” is fashion marketing’s favourite compliment of late. The life and style of Calvin Klein publicist Carolyn Bessette – known for her 1990s minimalism as much for her marriage to John F Kennedy Jr – have become a powerful and lucrative symbol for fashion brands facing a squeeze.

Analysts at UBS recently deemed the high-end market “the most bearish in years”: a basket of European luxury fashion stocks has fallen 17% this year and is close to levels last seen in April 2025, when Donald Trump launched his sweeping Liberation Day tariffs.

But as the finale of Ryan Murphy’s hit TV series Love Story aired last week – chronicling the turbulent and stylish relationship of Bessette and JFK Jr until their fatal plane crash in 1999 – it’s the middle-market clothing brands and resellers who are generating buyer attention with several well-timed advertising campaigns.

Uniqlo was quick to share a social media campaign copying the pair’s ill-fated paparazzi shots, while Massimo Dutti more recently launched “A Forever Story” collection of sleek pieces as an ode to “an iconic couple redefining everlonging style with quiet allure”.

TikTok estimates close to 30m videos relating to Bessette have been posted since the show started. Instagram shows 38.6m tagged posts. Searches have boomed for Bessette-Kennedy-esque staples: Levi’s 517 jeans, a black turtleneck, newsboy caps, or tortoiseshell headbands from the original CO Bigelow apothecary that Bessette frequented in New York. Retail intelligence platform Edited noted how retailers have an eye on the trending #KennedySummer, with Nordstrom, Asos and Pretty Little Thing all curating spring/summer campaigns in homage to the couple.

A revival of Bessette’s signature style has come at a crucial moment for shoppers frustrated by endless microtrends. Diana Pearl, senior editor at the Business of Fashion website, points to Bessette’s enduring appeal, elevated by Love Story’s fashion focus. “It’s not hard to mimic. Most brands have some garments where they can copy the Carolyn Bessette look – and it’s a way for them to participate in the zeitgeist,” says Pearl.

Brands connected to Bessette will benefit most, but her employer Calvin Klein was relatively late to the Love Story bandwagon. Still, it has benefited handsomely: online searches for “Calvin Klein 90s” have shot up 850%, according to Google Trends.

At the same time, luxury's secondhand counterparts have also benefited from capturing the 1990s feel. Searches for Calvin Klein on resale site the RealReal surged 139% after the show’s premiere, a Bessette-owned Prada coat sold for $192,000 at auction, and luxury resellers Vestiaire Collective collaborated with show streamers FX for an archival edit.

Pearl sees this moment mirroring the broader luxury market. “It’s not that consumers don’t desire luxury products,” she says, “but European luxury brands have gotten so expensive. They’re out of reach for the average consumer, so secondhand is a way you can still feed that appetite, but at a more reasonable price point.”

However, as brands and glossy magazine listicles battle to produce Bessette duplicates, surviving relatives and friends have denounced the show’s ethical transgressions. The commodification of Bessette’s legacy was criticised by Allure’s contributing editor, Marci Robin, who wrote that “brands that didn’t even exist in 1999 are diluting this complex, intelligent woman – who, lest we forget, died tragically – into a tool to sell their stuff without her consent”.

In a rare media comment in 1992, Bessette told Glamour magazine: “I’m not comfortable in anything ornate, I like clean, understated looks.” But the success of Love Story has encouraged brands to capitalise on connections to the 1990s icon. Even if brands continue to divide public opinion, the response to Love Story offers a playbook for those leveraging nostalgia to go viral.

Photograph by Eric Liebowitz/FX