Remembering JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette—Marking 20 Years since Plane Crash

In heartbreaking news of the death of John F. Kennedy Junior at the age of 38 along with his wife Carolyn Bassette Kennedy, 33, the world mourned the royal couple’s untimely passing 20 years ago on this day. No matter how time passes it still remains a sad memory that someone who was ahead of his time and loved by all was taken so soon.

Remarkably, JFK Jr. and Carolyn were a power couple who exuded the dream that everyone wished to have. They were in love, with a passion for their work equally. JFK Jr. was a man ahead of his time, who I believe was among the visionaries who predicted how politics and fashion will merge in the form that we use mostly now and what we call our social media, which gave rice to this digital age that we currently living in.  

His prediction took shape in the form of George, the first magazine to address politics yet from a fashionable angle, by which despite of most of the critical predictions it received before launching the first issue, he went for it and had on his first cover Cindy Crawford posing as George Washington. As he had expected, the magazine quickly flew off the shelves and became one of the bestsellers in the country, competing against the other strong publications.

Not only he worked very diligently to keep his dream going, he included his wife in the most important events, such in May 1999, George magazine hosted a table at the White House Correspondents Dinner and there one of the couple’s most famous picture was taken, capturing the ease and love they both had for each other.

“It was magical,” the magazine’s staffer RoseMarie Terenzio said of that night, according to an article published in Town&Country.

 “John was very much ready to make a splash with George. He was proud of it and thought, This is the time, this is the place, and we belong here. We just had a great time. Carolyn really was proud of John, and she was happy to be there to support him. She talked to everyone at the table and everyone at the next table. She went around to everyone on the staff and said hello,” she added.

Carolyn was someone who made sure to step away from the cameras that followed them, she kept their privacy a key element in their life, and by which there is no recorded video interview or even a print, of her showing how she spoke or what she thought in general. She was someone who was chased by the media, yet she never spoke to them.

She worked at Calvin Klein and he her sense of style was as classic and as timeless as today. Whenever a picture surfaced on the scene of her, she was always effortlessly put together in the most elegant and classy manner that radiated confidence in the minimalistic style she regularly selected for herself.

One of the ones who were really followed on the street for her sense of style and fashion sense was Carolyn, as if she was the one who unconsciously invented Street Style. Her career was a solid gold starting as a personal shopper from Calvin Klein for someone as famous as the TV presenter Diane Sawyer, then all the way up to being Calvin Klein’s publicist working from the head office in New York.

The grace she carried herself with and mystic made her even more demanded in the media, and remembered till this day as an icon of fashion who inspires us all to become as dedicated to our sense of style and being true to ourselves. The royal couple is truly missed and the sadness still stays in our hearts over their memory leaving this life that was decades ago, yet it feels that their work and love will always be remembered and admired.