“Classic” is a category that’s given a lot of air time in fashion coverage, often viewed as a way of dressing that’s morally superior to the frivolity of trends. Much of the time, the term is associated with specific clothes or accessories — a trench coat or a Birkin bag — that are thought to be resistant to the ebbs and flows of the industry.
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the fashion publicist who married John F Kennedy Jr in 1996 and died aged 33 in a plane crash in 1999, is often categorised as such, with her minimalist aesthetic tapping into a certain timelessness. As a new book on the New Yorker illustrates, she had a wholly individual sense of style, and eye for design that seemed effortless but was in fact carefully considered and rehearsed.