'Love Story' Was the Most Influential Menswear Show Since 'Mad Men'

Bob Morris, a longtime newspaper and magazine writer who covered the New York social scene at the time of the couple’s death, believes it was Kennedy Jr.’s combination of risk-taking and noblesse oblige that yielded such a fascinating tension—one that went far beyond fashion. He recalls John-John zipping around town in a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia convertible, in which he’d toss his infamous bike. “That to me is so much more interesting about a man’s style than a button-down shirt, loose-fitting khakis, or big-cut suits,” he says. “It wasn’t the clothes. It was the fact that he was getting his pilot’s license.”

“Yes, he was naturally beautiful and in very good shape,” Morris continues. “I think that it had more to do with what he carried with him, which is not just legacy and aristocracy, but a blatant willingness to be risky.”

In Love Story, Sarah Pidgeon's Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, left, has also inspired a fashion frenzy among young women.

But why, exactly, has Kennedy Jr.’s style, which is well-documented, tapped such a nerve at this moment? “There were all of these things bubbling up and coalescing that this show hit on, almost as a guidebook,” Tashjian says. Indeed, Ryan Murphy, with his preternatural understanding of the zeitgeist, tapped the nexus of the perfect couple and time period as a shortcut for a yearning already coursing through our collective psyches.

“So we have this ’90s nostalgia, this elevated gorp idea, where guys wear their Patagonia jacket with their Evan Kinori pants, and then there’s also the prep revival,” says Tashjian. “And men always like to see an idea for how to wear a suit that is a little creative or hip, but isn’t capital-F fashion.” She cites her own 2019 GQ story about how he would wear his bike chain as a belt—awild swerve, but one grounded in reality.

“The other thing that I think is really important here is that the secret to his style is not the combinations of unexpected items, or his good looks, or his city-dwelling life and the way that his style reflects an accessible, walkable city,” Tashjian says. “The key to his style is that his mother was one of the best-dressed women in the world.”

Indeed, despite his seemingly improvisational look, it’s hard to believe Kennedy Jr. had no larger understanding of how to forge an image of himself for the public eye. As Tashjian points out, his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and aunt, Lee Radziwill, were two of the most stylish women of their time; Jackie O. was also photographed nearly daily, to the point that she sued the prolific paparazzo Ron Galella. As is well documented in Love Story, JFK Jr. was also hounded by photographers, though he also maintained a coy relationship with the press (see: that infamous Sexiest Man Alive spread). And, to top it off, he married a public-relations executive at the hottest fashion brand in the city, a woman whose trade was crafting images to evoke emotion. “Even if he wasn’t ‘into fashion,’ he had a fluency with wearing and putting on clothes,” Tashjian notes.