'Either you have grace or you don't'

Bessette Kennedy, Maltz Bovy, often confused

I am proposing actual marriage to the comments to Vanessa Friedman’s (also-good) article about how the late Carolyn Bessette Kennedy is, despite the whole dead-since-1999 thing, the influencer of the moment. Some brand that is (actually) called Sporty and Rich has recreated paparazzi shots of the Bessette Kennedy and her late husband JFK Jr., which is a bit weird but of all the things to get worked up about…

I clicked because I have been thusly influenced, if not recently. I once (in 2011) saw a dress like the one Bessette Kennedy wore to her wedding in a Parisian vintage store (one I can picture perfectly, the intersection and everything, but I have forgotten street names and can no longer map it) and… didn’t buy it, but should have. Insofar as I ever thought about wedding dresses before getting married, which was not a ton, I did like that one. The one I ended up with (the vintage store no longer had the dress when I went back to look!) was probably better for a short person than that would have been, but nevertheless.

The comments to Friedman’s article, though, are a delight. Everyone’s waxing nostalgic for the days of elegant simplicity. Were the late 1990s that? Who knows (not at my high school, which was incidentally at the edge of Tribeca, not far from where they lived; I must have crossed their paths all the time en route to a muffin), but if these days are about stealth wealth and coastal grandmother aesthetic, then the late 1990s as remembered by the 2020s would have been that.

The wistfulness coexists, somehow, with repeated references to how if you dressed CBK-style today, you would not look out of place. Which is true-ish (the overall look yes, the square-toed burgundy boots, perhaps not), but also, it suggests that we are not living in an era devoid of effortless chic or whatever buzzwords one uses for such matters.

Not a comment-reader or a Times subscriber? Fear not, I have read the comments for you and even rated the best of the bunch:

Most anachronistic: “Her look is very refreshing, never looked like she spent hours on makeup and hair, or a face full of injectibles”

Who, in 1999, had “a face full of injectibles”? (I am setting aside the preposterous suggestion that her hair looked low-maintenance.) If this is your bar, you will find virtually every fashion-and-lifestyle photograph from pre-2000 “very refreshing.” Which, maybe they all are, but it wasn’t a her thing.

Most misplaced financial concern: “Why are dead celebrities exploited? And I doubt any proceeds go to her estate or to a charity in her name.”

I’m just trying to picture a company going for the Carolyn Bessette Kennedy look and deciding that this was doing an appropriation such that they needed to donate to… the estate of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

Most in the spirit of that menswear-pedant account: “Both were beautiful and elegant. It's a bit churlish to say, but even JFK Jr. doesn't look good in a double-breasted suit. Or it just might be that the suit is just too long all over.”

Whatever. Elaine Benes wasn’t bothered.

Most negging: “She absolutely looked her age too - a scarily refreshing sight.”

The woman was 33 when she died! In what sense was she aging gracefully? She didn’t get to age at all!

And finally, with the stiffest of competition, most inadvertently Seinfeldian: “Unfortunately this entire article seems lacking in demeanor and suggests poor taste. Demeanor is an attribute which John Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette shared. Let's remember them in that classic perspective.”

It’s the one where Elaine tries and fails to get a publishing job once held by Jackie O.