He was arguably one of the most photographed young men in the world— heir to a political dynasty, son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, publisher of George magazine, and a dashingly handsome, charismatic figure who carried the weight of the Kennedy name. She was the willowy, enigmatic Calvin Klein publicist whose effortless aesthetic helped define 1990s minimalism. Together, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette embodied both legacy and modernity, uptown privilege and downtown cool.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s well-appointed Fifth Avenue living room was recreated with paneled walls, French antiques (many borrowed from Newel Antiques), and traditional damask, chintz, and striped fabrics.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluThe nine-part series Love Story, airing now on Hulu and FX, revisits the tumultuous courtship and marriage of Kennedy and Bessette, a relationship conducted as much in public view as in private, and tragically cut short by their 1999 plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard. Inspired by Elizabeth Beller’s book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the film stars Paul Anthony Kelly as Kennedy and Sarah Pidgeon as Bessette.
Emmy award–nominated production designer Alex DiGerlando (known for his moody work on True Detective and Fosse/Verdon) and set decorator Lydia Marks (Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada) were tasked with shaping two distinct visual worlds: the prim and polished formality of Jackie O’s Fifth Avenue and the edgy modernism of John and Carolyn’s Tribeca and East Village.
An intensely private person, Jackie (played by Naomi Watts) goes through her personal correspondence, throwing letters into her bedroom fireplace once she knows she is sick and dying.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluSet against the cultural backdrop of 1990s New York, the design story begins at Jackie’s palatial 1040 Fifth Avenue residence on the Upper East Side across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she inhabited the entire 15th floor of an elegant 1930 Rosario Candela building. Here the old guard remained rooted in tradition and layered in formality and refinement.
The set design process began as all projects do: with lots of research—in this case, images from Sotheby’s catalogue from the estate sale of Jackie’s furniture and personal mementos in 1996, as well as archival photography. “We wanted to represent the apartment as accurately as possible,” says DiGerlando, “but we also wanted to align with the overall aesthetic of our show.” Marks, who has designed her share of Manhattan interiors both on and off sets, adds, “We wanted Jackie’s palette to be warm and her textiles to have a pattern but less contrast [than in real life]. We eventually settled on a design language that felt very much like Jackie’s but was not a literal reproduction.”
An accomplished equestrienne, Jackie collected equine art, like this painting in the grasscloth-papered dining room.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluMarks notes that Jackie’s personal style remained very consistent throughout her homes: “She loved Central Park and set up a drawing table in front of her windows where she could see it, along with a view of the Metropolitan Museum from the terrace. She loved collecting classical sculpture, and her shelves were filled with well-worn books on architecture, design, and history.” Marks also looked to the work of celebrated decorator Sister Parish, who worked with Jackie on the Georgetown townhouse where she lived during her husband’s Senate run in the 1950s. “For me, the styles of those [Parish and Kennedy] blend traditional choices with something so original in their layered, luxurious-yet-cozy comfort,” explains Marks.
The library is a study in cultivated intimacy, with Jackie’s baby grand piano, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, polished herringbone floors, and a skirted loveseat (in a Schumacher stripe) that softens and feminizes the architecture.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluIn Love Story, Jackie’s Fifth Avenue apartment becomes less a backdrop than an extension of her character. Her home displays a well-traveled and well-lived life, with collections ranging from plaster and marble busts to framed engravings of classical works on paper to Greek antiquities acquired during her marriage to Aristotle Onassis.
The library, which includes a black-lacquered grand piano, speaks of inherited taste that is European in lineage. Her bedroom follows suit: A four-poster-canopied bed serves as an anchor, dressed in layered florals and soft rose-toned textiles. The living room is designed in a similar vein, featuring paneled walls and a marble fireplace with French-inflected furnishings—think Louis XVI chairs, slender-legged tables, and delicate marquetry set against a color palette of muted blues, gold, celadon, and pale coral.
In JFK Jr.’s Tribeca loft, high ceilings, cast iron columns, and minimalist furnishings typify 1990s downtown loft living.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluMeanwhile, a different kind of design language takes shape in her son’s downtown loft. Stripped of color and ornamentation, it encapsulates the Tribeca ideal, with its hub of turn-of-the-20th-century industrial buildings and artists. By the mid-1990s, open plans, exposed brick, and expansive windows were the coveted features south of Houston Street. Marks explains, “We didn’t have many photos to look at for John’s loft, but we did have a few anecdotal concepts. We figured John had worked with a decorator to furnish his loft. He wasn’t formal and the word ‘fratty’ was floated around but I think it’s more that he was casual.”
Painted exposed brick walls, boxy wood-framed sofas, and prominent stereo speakers were chosen to capture John’s youthful, utilitarian aesthetic.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluJohn’s home was the top floor of a 1921 warehouse at 20 North Moore Street. Its cast iron architecture, glass-brick walls, and cavernous industrial design marked a clear departure from the tony environs of Fifth Avenue. The furnishings chosen for his apartment have an industrial bent—think low-slung upholstery, long, spare tables, and surfaces devoid of accessories.
Pidgeon as Bessette in the Calvin Klein office on West 39th Street.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluIf Jackie’s spaces were layered in history, Carolyn Bessette’s were defined by her well-edited sense of style. She took her cues from her mentor and boss Calvin Klein, who pioneered the era’s pared-back modernism. “The directive from producer Ryan Murphy was that he wanted to lean into this idea of minimalism and keep the actors in the foreground,” says DiGerlando. “There is a level of stylization inspired by the classic Hollywood romances of the 1930s.”
In Calvin Klein’s office, a pared-back palette predominates, from black-and-white photography to the steel bookshelves, MR Chairs, and black granite table on casters.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluIn the series, the Calvin Klein offices are furnished with modern classics—tubular steel Mies van der Rohe and Breuer Wassily chairs, steel shelving units serving as bookcases, black granite tables on casters, an industrial Studio tripod floor lamp by Mariano Fortuny—that make a major design statement. The color palette is restricted almost entirely to black, grays, and neutrals. And yes, only white flowers—orchids in particular—were allowed in the office.
The fashion titan’s visual language did not emerge out of nowhere. Designer Joe D’Urso’s industrial interiors of the 1970s and ’80s helped establish the restrained modernism Klein embraced. And in the mid 1990s, British architect John Pawson’s work on Calvin Klein’s Madison Avenue flagship store further shaped the aesthetic that Carolyn soon embraced.
A glossy black table, tubular steel chairs, white orchids, and Massimo Vignelli’s iconic Stendig wall calendar decorate a conference room.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluThe series is filled with many of the actual restaurants and places that John and Carolyn frequented, many of which still retain the ambience of 1990s New York, from The Odeon on West Broadway in Tribeca and Michael’s on West 55th Street—both fixtures of the media and publishing set—to Indochine on Lafayette Street and the kaleidoscopic Panna II Indian restaurant in the East Village, the site of the couple’s first date in the series. The Pool Room at The Four Seasons, where the show sets Kelly Klein’s book party for Pools, is now The Pool (the show’s greenskeeper recreated the original cherry blossoms flanking the pool) and the Equinox gym on Columbus Circle stands in for the New York Athletic Club. “What’s so cool is that John and Carolyn were citizens of the city and would pop up in all these places,” DiGerlando says.
The Calvin Klein office epitomizes the well-edited aesthetic world that Carolyn inhabited.
Courtesy of FX Networks and HuluBeyond the romance and tragedy, what lingers is a portrait of New York at a crossroads—where silk damask met downtown chrome and one era yielded to another. The love story may have been brief, but the aesthetic shift it reflects continues to shape how we see the city today.
