“Goodbye to All That,” by Charles Gandee, was originally published in the September 1999 issue of Vogue.
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He wasn’t a prince. Nor she a Cinderella. And no matter how frequently they were fawned over in the press as the “fairy tale” couple—as our “royalty”—they were the antithesis of all that. She wore headbands, not tiaras. He rode a bicycle, not a white steed. They lived in a loft, not a castle. And outside was parked a black Saab, not a gold carriage. All of which made 33-year-old Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and 38-year-old John F. Kennedy, Jr., more compelling than if they actually had been the storybook couple with the “charmed life” we never grew weary of reading about. Because when you factor in the element of modernity to that magical equation of youth and beauty and money and power and fame and breeding and poise and style, you have what they had: the capacity to captivate, to spark the collective imagination, to be, for better or for worse, the cynosure of all eyes—at all times.
For him, of course, the glare of popping flashbulbs began on the morning of December 9, 1960, as he emerged from Georgetown University Hospital with his mother—fourteen days after his premature birth, 31 days after his father had been elected the thirty-fifth president of the United States. For her it began on the evening of September 21,1996, as she emerged from the First African Baptist Church on Cumberland Island, wearing a racehorse-sleek, cut-on-the-bias silk slip dress, and a radiant smile intended for the 40 friends and family members invited to the secret ceremony—but seen by virtually everyone in the free world with access to a newspaper, a magazine, a television, or the Internet.
Though she was hardly a stranger to privilege, or to rich, handsome suitors, only someone trained at the knee of Jacqueline Onassis could have been prepared for that special, laser-sharp spotlight reserved for the woman who would capture the heart of the heartbreaking little boy who saluted his father’s horse-drawn coffin that gray November day in 1963. Or for what it meant to be “Camelot’s New Queen,” as the tabloids couldn’t resist crowning her the moment the newlyweds headed off to Turkey for their honeymoon. Even Newsweek succumbed to hyperbole—splashing “The Carolyn Style” across its cover, proclaiming, “JFK Jr.’s bride is already a fashion icon for the ’90s.” Four months of around-the-clock paparazzi later, London’s Daily Telegraph was perversely gloating that the honeymoon was over: “She might have won her prince, but she has lost her privacy for good. Small wonder that this particular princess appears to spend a considerable time sitting alone in her tower, crying her eyes out.” But if she was, she wasn’t talking about it to the press—having apparently learned that lesson from the mother-in-law she never knew.
In the stream of endlessly published pictures that tracked that period of her life between the island off the coast of Georgia and the island off the coast of Massachusetts she often had the look of a slightly frightened, slightly puzzled rabbit, but that look was unfamiliar to anyone who knew her. Ironically, it was her confident ease, her unselfconscious charm and spirited personality that transported her from Boston’s Chestnut Hill Mall, where she worked at the Calvin Klein boutique after graduating from Boston University in 1988, to New York, where she was handed the designer’s roster of celebrity clients and instructed to take care of the kind of people who tend to need a lot of taking care of. Three years later, she was promoted to director of public relations for Klein’s flagship Collections division. And then she met Kennedy, and more and more frequently she had to leave her West Thirty-ninth Street office through the freight entrance.
Before she became Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Jr., she may not have been instantly distinguishable from all the other young brunettes turned blondes around town who leave their Birkin bags fashionably open, but at a certain, early point she clearly decided to break that image. The first sign of her independent streak was asking friend Narciso Rodriguez, whom she met when he was an unknown designer in Klein’s studio, to design her wedding dress. Later, realizing that the girl voted “the ultimate beautiful person” by her Greenwich, Connecticut, high school classmates might benefit from a bit of edge, she began turning up at the various charity balls and black-tie dinners that came with the marital territory in Versace or, more and more frequently, Yohji Yamamoto. Two images come to mind: her shaking hands with British prime minister Tony Blair last year wearing black opera-length gloves and a black strapless Yamamoto gown; and her at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this year, nuzzling against her husband in a double-breasted evening suit with peaked lapels and a Bakelite fan necklace she ordered from Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring ’99 couture collection.
When the press took notice of his wife’s emerging style, her husband glowed: “You gotta see the back; the back’s the best part,” he once instructed a reporter who asked about a particular dress. But then Kennedy had been navigating the minefield of public life for a long time, honing his skills at disarming reporters with a winning mix of candor, wit, and charm that came in handy when “The Hunk Flunks” and “The Sexiest Man Alive” hit newsstands. He also had the opportunity to display the dignity and grace that counteracted his sometimes precarious image. Standing in front of 1040 Fifth Avenue on May 20, 1994, for example, he broke the news the world had been dreading, facing the throngs with remarkable poise: “Last night, at around 10:15, my mother passed on.…”
But he also showed that he had a bit of the provocateur, of the press-baiter in him. In 1995, when he launched George, he invited Madonna, with whom he was “linked,” as the papers put it, to pen a piece entitled “If I Were President.” A year later, he persuaded Drew Barrymore to do herself up as Marilyn Monroe on the night Monroe shimmied onto the stage at Madison Square Garden in May 1962 to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”
Like his mother, who would employ her immeasurable clout to save Grand Central Terminal from demolition, or Central Park from the shadow of a planned skyscraper, he was well aware of the power of celebrity, including his own. And how it could be harnessed, put to work for things he cared about—like selling magazines or drawing attention and support for worthy causes. Six years ago, he sent word to Vogue that he would sit for a portrait by Annie Leibovitz and an interview with then-editor-at-large William Norwich, providing the magazine agreed to certain conditions. Those conditions were that the article be about the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, established in 1989 to recognize “exemplary acts of political courage by elected officials,” and that the portrait be not of him alone but with lawyer and civil rights activist Elaine R. Jones, then one of the members of the voting committee for the award. Perhaps because Norwich couldn’t help himself, he asked Kennedy if he ever considered running for public office. Rather than bolt the room yelling, “We had a deal,” Kennedy paused and said, “I have to admit it is something I consider a lot.”
Would he have done it? Or would he have stayed with George, the fragile magazine he was determined to make a success? And would his wife have rallied to the opportunities her marriage presented with the same savvy with which she rallied to her first task, of being Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Jr.? If so, which opportunities?
No one likes unanswered questions. Especially these.