It has been 26 years since John F Kennedy Jr and his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy tragically lost their lives in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

The accident also claimed the life of Carolyn’s older sister Lauren, when John Jr became disoriented while piloting his single-engine aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean amidst heavy fog.

But the passage of time has done little to diminish the public’s fascination with the couple.

Currently, they are in the spotlight once more due to writer and director Ryan Murphy’s depiction of them in his forthcoming FX series, ‘American Love Story.’

What’s more, a new biography of Carolyn suggests that our fixation with her in death is driven by a desire to compensate for how appallingly we treated her in life. 

In Once Upon A Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Elizabeth Beller writes: ‘Those who contributed to the frenzy and obsession surrounding John and Carolyn – and I speculate that most of the American public alive at the time were guilty of playing a role; myself included – perhaps feel a deep sense of remorse for pinning Carolyn beneath a microscope, especially considering the way it all ended. 

‘So instead, we have collectively enshrined her in the halls of American fashion icons because doing so has allowed us to rewrite her story as one of quiet luxury and stealth-wealth style, of capsule wardrobes and intentional sustainability, not one of relentless stalking and public scrutiny.’ 

Few could dispute Carolyn’s ongoing influence on the world of fashion.

Her go-to designers were gods to minimalist chic – her favorite, simple brown Prada boots, for instance, her edgy ‘everyday armor’ of Yohji Yamamoto, and that exquisite white silk wedding gown by Narciso Rodriguez.

Yet, early pictures from the set of Murphy’s forthcoming drama show actress Sarah Pidgeon, who is playing Carolyn, styled in the kind of tacky knock-offs tourists pick up for a few dollars on New York’s Canal Street.

Earlier this month, as Murphy excitedly posted a few first looks from the series, which stars Paul Anthony Kelly as John Jr, the critics responded with horror. What could have possessed Murphy to put his Carolyn into such poorly made fast fashion?

Observers called out everything from an anachronistic ‘satin slip skirt from 2017’ to the ‘wrong’ Hermes Birkin bag. 

Also, Pidgeon’s hair was terrible, they said – one solid, unnatural-looking blonde color instead of her trademark buttery, sun-bleached chunks. 

Carolyn’s onetime colorist, Brad Johns opined: ‘No one would believe that Carolyn in the ’90s would ever have that color from me. It’s too 2024.’

Even John Jr’s nephew, Jack Schlossberg, got in on the act, calling out the writer and director for not consulting with the Kennedy family and damning him for profiting from his uncle’s death ‘in a grotesque way.’

For his part, Murphy has defended his choices, claiming the looks had simply been thrown together for lighting and color tests and that they would be replaced later with more authentic options.

Ironically, Beller suggests in her book, Carolyn would probably have found the whole thing hugely entertaining. Her personal style was more bare feet and messy, unwashed hair than red-carpet looks and couture.

‘Once Upon a Time’ quotes a former supervisor at Calvin Klein – where Carolyn worked as a publicist before taking the reins as a producer of the designer’s fashion shows – as saying: ‘Sometimes she would be wearing a fisherman’s sweater, track pants, and sneakers, her hair wild.’

The book goes on to say: ‘They had contests to see who could show up with the dirtiest head of hair. One time she turned to a friend and asked: “Is this too Stevie Nicks?”‘

Fashion commentators agree that it was only once she and ‘John John’ became official that her signature look evolved into the slick minimalism we now remember her for. 

Written with the co-operation of some of Carolyn’s closest friends and confidantes, the memoir suggests that her dramatic makeover may have been a desperate, hopeful, attempt to become what she thought Mrs John F Kennedy Jr should be: ‘A woman Jackie would have approved of.’

Carolyn never had a chance to meet her mother-in-law – JFK Jr once unceremoniously rushed her out of a restaurant side door when his mother unexpectedly walked in to avoid the pair bumping into each other – but it’s believed that she never stopped seeking her blessing.

‘Carolyn broke up with him a couple of times for not introducing her to his mother – it really bothered her,’ a close friend told Beller in the book. 

‘Carolyn was very bohemian, a downtown girl, which John loved… but it’s possible John was worried how that would go over with Jackie.’

So Carolyn became obsessed with not giving the press or the public anything they could criticize. She tamed her wild hair under headbands from local apothecary C.O. Bigelow. She dressed almost exclusively in black and beige, with only the occasional smattering of color, as seen in a favorite red plaid Prada coat. 

But none of it made any difference. She was called icy and vapid; there were even accusations of drug taking and affairs with other men. The couple’s well-publicized, violent bust-up in Battery Park only confirmed, in the public’s eye, that she was an undeserving harpy. 

Carolyn couldn’t win.

Had she lived, Beller argues in her conclusion, the public would have got to know the true Carolyn. And her legacy would have been less about her fashion and more about the causes that really mattered to her – working with children and young people, and giving a voice to the underprivileged. 

‘What is sad,’ Beller concludes, ‘is that she never had the opportunity to be one of a thousand different women she could have been.’

Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller is published by Gallery Books