What Did Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy Actually Do at Calvin Klein?
By Alexus Mosley
Photo Credit/Getty Images
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy has been mythologized to the point of near-fiction. Depending on who you ask, she was either a minimalist muse, a quiet fashion oracle, or the physical embodiment of everything chic about the 1990s. But before she became Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the patron saint of minimalist cool, she clocked in like the rest of us. Only her office just happened to be one of the most influential fashion houses of the 90s. That’s right, she had a very real, very corporate fashion job at Calvin Klein.
So… what did she actually do there?
Carolyn worked in public relations and VIP relations at Calvin Klein in the early to mid-1990s. This put her inside the brand’s communications machine, working with editors, stylists, and celebrity clients. Translation: she helped shape how Calvin Klein presented itself to the world during its defining minimalist era.
Fashion PR in the ’90s was personal, analog, and intensely relationship-driven. Carolyn’s day would’ve looked like managing relationships with fashion editors and journalists at major publications such as Vogue, coordinating celebrity fittings and placements, overseeing showroom appointments and press requests, and assisting with brand events, campaigns, and launches. She quite literally dressed some of the most influential women, including Diane Sawyer, one of the most visible media figures of the decade.
And let’s not forget that she helped lobby for Kate Moss to appear in the brand’s 1992 underwear campaign alongside Mark Wahlberg. That campaign went on to define the visual language of 90s fashion and catapult Kate Moss into global superstardom.
Kate Moss (left) and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (right) backstage at the Calvin Klein Fall/Winter 1994-1995 show
Photo Credit/Getty Images
The “Carolyn look” of clean lines, neutral tones, slip dresses, and unfussy tailoring wasn’t random. That was the classic Calvin Klein in the ’90s. She lived inside that world professionally before the world ever clocked her as a style icon. She didn’t dress like someone cosplaying minimalism because she deeply understood it.
When people say, “Oh, to work at Calvin Klein in the ’90s,” they’re not just talking about clothes. They’re talking about a time when fashion houses felt like cultural nerve centers, when offices doubled as taste labs, and influence moved quietly through meetings, fittings, and editor lunches instead of Instagram.
Jenny Landy (left) and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (right) Photo Credit/Getty Images
Before the mood boards and mythology, there was just a woman working in fashion PR, pulling looks, dressing VIPs, coordinating fittings, and helping a brand like Calvin Klein look exactly the way it needed to in the ’90s. The icon came later. The office job came first.