“Nothing about her style was forced, that is what made her so charismatic,” designer Gabriela Hearst wrote in the foreword to the book CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, A Life in Fashion. “Hers was not an opulent style, but it was luxurious.”
Bessette Kennedy’s much mythologised stripped-back approach—the Narciso Rodriguez bias-cut bridal slip, the crisp white shirts, the Manolo Blahnik mules—extended to her jewellery box. Scroll once more through the endlessly scrutinised pap shots of the former PR executive for Calvin Klein, and you’ll find that the wrists and fingers that peek from the sleeves of grey Prada coats and ruffled Yohji Yamamoto jackets are typically bare.
Admittedly, you hardly need jewellery when you have the perfect shiny blonde blow-out—a shade dubbed “bold and gold” by Kari Hill, the hair colourist who worked on the set of Disney+’s just-released Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette. And save for a shot of Bessette Kennedy on the arm of JFK Jr at an event in honour of his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, in 1998—which finds her wearing a strapless black dress and a bejewelled bangle over opera gloves—she was rarely spotted wearing any jewellery besides subtle diamond studs and her engagement ring.
The ring, the result of a 1995 proposal, reflected Carolyn’s anything-but-ostentatious style, and was conceived as a simple eternity band of round-cut diamonds and sapphires, set on white platinum. Some believe the design was based on a gold and emerald band that was owned by Jackie O, which the former First Lady had fondly referred to as her “swimming ring”.
There’s another origin myth behind a timepiece that was a mainstay in CBK’s city wardrobe. When out and about in Tribeca (often walking her pet dog, Friday), she was photographed wearing a Cartier Tank Louis with a black leather strap. The angular Tank model—first conceived in 1917 by Louis Cartier, based on the design of Renault FT-17 military tanks—was also beloved by Andy Warhol, Ingrid Bergman, Truman Capote, Princess Diana, and of course, Jackie Kennedy, who died in 1994.
Some accounts had it that the watch CBK wore was an heirloom from her husband’s late mother’s collection, a tale that seemed to be dispelled when it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in 2017. Still, author Sunita Kumar Nair, who wrote the aforementioned book about Bessette Kennedy, has said a source told her Carolyn did indeed own one of Jackie Kennedy’s Tank watches. Whether there is one watch that was worn by both women, we’ll probably never know. But we do know these two style icons shared the same taste in classic timepieces.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
