Part of an ongoing series of 29Secrets stories, taking a deep dive into the history of legendary beauty products and iconic fashion moments…
By Christopher Turner
Illustration by Michael Hak
There are a handful of celebrity wedding dresses that have captured our attention and stood the test of time…one of those gowns is Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s Narciso Rodriguez silk sheath wedding dress, which is still beloved by brides and fashion watchers everywhere.
When Calvin Klein publicist Carolyn Bessette married John F. Kennedy Jr. to much fanfare back in 1996, tying the knot at a rustic chapel on Georgia’s Cumberland Island, she unintentionally marked a new era of wedding dress trends. Her simple white slip dress with its cowl neckline, which she accessorized with sheer gloves and a simple veil, was hailed as the ultimate minimalist look. It would later become the pinnacle of ’90s bridal fashion, putting an end to the voluminous styles of the 1980s, made famous by high-profile brides like Princess Diana.
Almost three decades after the very secluded nuptials on Cumberland Island (there were only 35 guests in attendance!), and 25 years after the couple’s tragic death, Bessette-Kennedy lives on as a ’90s style icon, with her wedding dress repeatedly referenced. Why is that?
Here’s the story of one of the most elusive private weddings of all time, and how the iconic wedding dress helped turn its designer into a bona fide fashion star.
Early life
Carolyn Bessette was born in White Plains, New York, on January 7, 1966, the youngest of three children. Her parents divorced when she was young and when her mother remarried, she and her twin sisters ended up moving to a wealthy corner of Connecticut, just outside of New York City. She attended Juniper Hill Elementary School, then St. Mary’s High School, where she was voted “ultimate beautiful person,” and went on to attend Boston University, where she graduated in 1988 with an undergraduate degree in education. She briefly attempted a modelling career during her university days, but quickly abandoned that dream when it didn’t prove to be profitable, although she did appear on the cover of Boston University’s calendar, “The Girls of B.U.”
Bessette’s first job after graduation was in public relations for a nightclub company in New England, which was followed by a job as a sales associate at the Calvin Klein boutique at the Chestnut Hill Mall in Newton, Massachusetts, a position that allowed her to indulge her passion for stylish clothes. Within a few years she transferred to New York and eventually became the director of publicity for the company’s flagship store in Manhattan.
Six feet tall with long blonde hair, Bessette was linked with an assortment of men – including a Calvin Klein model, a pro hockey player and the heir to the Benetton fashion company fortune – before she met John F. Kennedy Jr., the son of former US President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. JFK Jr. had been born two weeks after his father was elected president and he spent his early childhood living in the White House until his father was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. At the funeral procession, which took place on his third birthday, he famously gave his father’s flag-draped casket a final salute as it went past him.
Bessette and JFK Jr. first met and spoke when they were both running in Central Park…a cliché for New York fairy tale romance if ever there was one…which prompted unprecedented media interest in the pair. When they began dating in 1994, the couple became a paparazzi target, and gossip columns detailed their every move and public disagreement.
Bessette moved into JFK Jr.’s Tribeca loft in the summer of 1995, and the couple became engaged later that year, though JFK Jr. consistently denied reports of this. The following year, in the spring of 1996, Bessette quit her job at Calvin Klein and privately began getting ready for the couple’s nuptials that would happen later that year, determined to keep it a secret from the press.
The private wedding and the dress that captured our attention
Despite being the most photographed couple on the planet, the couple somehow managed to keep their wedding plans a secret from the press, avoiding media onlookers at the wedding itself. Bessette and JFK Jr. exchanged vows on September 21, 1996, in a private ceremony on the remote Cumberland Island, which is a mile off the coast of the US state of Georgia. His older sister, Caroline, was matron of honour and his cousin Anthony Radziwill (the son of his aunt Lee Radziwill-Ross) was best man. Caroline Kennedy’s two daughters, Tatiana and Rose, were flower girls, and her son Jack was the ring bearer. The candlelight ceremony took place inside the First African Baptist Church – a tiny wooden chapel with just eight wooden pews and no air conditioning, built in 1893 by people who were formerly enslaved – with only 35 guests in attendance.
Bessette wore a gown that was designed by Narciso Rodriguez, a friend from her days as a Calvin Klein publicist. She had asked Rodriguez to design her wedding dress while having drinks at The Odeon Restaurant in New York City’s trendy Tribeca neighbourhood. Her selection was, of course, a surprise – after all, Rodriguez was virtually unknown at the time. (Thanks to the incoming publicity surrounding the dress, the designer launched his own label within a year.)
“She loved him,” said Paul Rowland, a close friend and colleague, in Sunita Kumar Nair’s 2023 biography, CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion. “She wanted the best for him as she did for everyone. She always championed the underdog. That’s what made her so special.”
There were two three-hour couture fittings for the dress in Paris, France, through the summer months. The designer not only created the wedding dress but also Bessette’s maid of honour dress – a high-waisted navy silk crepe gown – and Bessette’s rehearsal dress, a cream beaded chiffon design. There were three final versions of the wedding dress in various luxurious fabrics: the final selection was the minimalist silk crêpe wedding dress we’ve come to know, which was a gift from Rodriguez, reportedly valued around $40,000.
The final choice was a bias-cut, slip-like, floor-length gown that was made of pearl-white silk crêpe and featured a cowl décolletage. Along with the gown, Bessette wore a long hand-rolled tulle veil, long sheer silk gloves and a pair of crystal-beaded Manolo Blahnik strappy satin sandals. Bessette’s bun hairstyle was pinned and held by a clip that had belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and her simple bouquet, which was arranged by famed American horticulturalist Rachel Lambert Mellon, contained lily of the valley.
“It was a great moment in my career but also a beautiful moment in my personal life,” Rodriguez told Vogue in September 2018. “Someone I loved very much asked me to make the most important dress of her life.”
In the weeks leading up to her nuptials, Bessette lost weight and her dress was too loose on her wedding day. As confirmed by her hairstylist, George Kyriakos, in CBK, it had to be taken in just hours before the secret ceremony.
“She was late to the wedding, perhaps in her nervousness of getting everything perfect,” added Sasha Chermayeff, one of JFK Jr.’s best friends and a wedding attendee. “I always thought that it made everything perfect in a way because the evening sun was setting and then the wedding was candlelit. It was beautiful.”
The silk slip seen around the world
Among the 35 guests who attended the fairy tale wedding on the secluded island was one trusted photographer, Denis Reggie, who captured the newlyweds leaving the church. The snap, which shows JFK. Jr. kissing his wife’s hand as they leave the small church, was released to the press and has come to be one of the most iconic wedding photos ever captured. It was the first, and only, look at Bessette’s dress, which would later become the pinnacle of ’90s bridal style.
“It was an incredibly magical moment,” Reggie told Vanity Fair in 2021 of his memory of taking a photograph that later landed on the cover of People. “I saw it as it was unfolding, almost in silhouette. It was virtually dark outside. John reached for the hand of Carolyn; she was caught off guard. I’m walking backwards in the light rain at dusk, and John does this amazing gesture, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips.
“I was really moved by it and Carolyn’s surprise,” Reggie added. “I adored her expression – it says it all. The way she flowed in her beautiful dress, moving at full pace, coming down the steps. It was happening in real time and not in any way posed or arranged.”
He continued, “It was indicative of the way the wedding was – natural and of the moment, not trying to be any more than it was in its simplicity. It had such an incredible elegance and romance; the authenticity of it all, its simplicity, gives it real power. It was a really special photograph.”
For many, Reggie’s image perfectly captured both the fairy tale romance and one of the most elusive private weddings of all time – an event that had taken six months of planning and “required the skill of a James Bond and the whole CIA,” Letitia Baldrige, the former White House chief of staff to the groom’s mother, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, told People at the time.
The simplicity and elegance of the design made a lasting impression on the fashion world. Former Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Kate Betts, who worked at Vogue at the time of the wedding, described the dress as “revolutionary.”
“The wedding dress worn by Carolyn Bessette for her 1996 wedding remains one of the most iconic in history and still looks as modern and fresh today as it did almost three decades ago,” Alison McGill, a wedding expert and the host of the podcast Aisle Seat, told 29Secrets. “In her bridal era, Bessette stayed true to her polished, minimalist style and wore a wedding gown that was very much a moment – it was the complete opposite of everything that was happening in bridal fashion at the time, which was still a more-is-more aesthetic of big ball gowns with lacy fabrications and loads of embellishments.”
Trendsetting and defining an era
Following the voluminous styles of the 1980s, made famous by brides like Princess Diana, Bessette’s beautiful minimalist wedding dress marked a new era of wedding dress trends. It completely changed the landscape of wedding gowns by solidifying an emerging trend: minimalist designs, which dominated through the next decade and beyond.
Vogue said the dress “may be one of the most sought-after gowns of all time. [Bessette] hands-down changed the wedding dress game – making it acceptable and desirable to wear something refined and simple: a white silk slip rather than princess-y tulle and an embellished gown,” while Women’s Wear Daily said the gown “shifted bridal fashion into a new, modernist era.”
What made it such a game changer? “Vera Wang and Carolina Herrera were simplifying their designs, but not as simple as a slip dress,” Betts told Vanity Fair. “It crystallized that trend [minimalism] in fashion. That was her aesthetic, and her wedding dress was a very, very bold expression of that minimalism.”
“Bessette is a bride who wore a look that spoke to her and her personal style,” says McGill. “[Her] dress is still one of the top trends in bridal which has endured; the slip wedding dress is the perfect choice for a bride who wants a fashion-forward gown that is at once timeless and the very essence of modernity.”
It’s true. Bessette-Kennedy can be fully credited as the original minimalist, quiet luxury bride, with a wedding look that ultimately cemented her status as a style icon and has inspired generations of brides, including fellow celebrities like Kate Moss, Sofia Richie Grainge and Megan Markle. In a March 2016 interview with Glamour, before Markle had even met Prince Harry, the then-Suits actress revealed that her ideal wedding dress would mimic Bessette-Kennedy’s gown, calling the famous Narciso Rodriguez slip dress “everything goals.” At the royal wedding on May 19, 2018, her Stella McCartney gown was indeed a nod to Bessette-Kennedy.
Today, designers still reference the iconic wedding look, and Bessette-Kennedy is regularly hailed not only as a woman who defined the minimalist chic movement of New York City in the 1990s, but a minimalist style icon. Just look on social media: there are a slew of Instagram and TikTok accounts dedicated to the woman, reinforcing that her style not only defined a look but an era.
The impact
Following the wedding, Rodriguez’s career soared. In 1997, he left his post at Cerruti and launched his own namesake label, which is still thriving today. Bessette-Kennedy and her fashion choices also became front page news. But while her impact on fashion has been long lasting, her fashion reign was brief.
On July 16, 1999, two and a half years after their marriage, JFK Jr., his wife and her sister, Lauren, were killed when their small private plane crashed. The trio were on their way to a summer wedding when the plane, piloted by JFK Jr., went down off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Even 25 years after the couple’s tragic death, we remain intrigued by the couple, their short-lived relationship and Bessette-Kennedy’s sense of style. With the recent revival of ’90s minimalism – now termed “quiet luxury” – Rodriguez’s design has proven timeless, and the impact of Bessette-Kennedy’s sense of style remains.
Want more? You can read other stories from our The Story Of series, including THE STORY OF: Jackie Kennedy’s Pink Chanel Suit and others, right here.
