“No one can ever emulate her to a tee,” Julia Rabinowitsch, vintage sourcer and founder of lifestyle site The Millennial Decorator, says of the late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy – but she does want to help us all try. On June 4, Rabinowitsch is of 15 pairs of shoes once worn by the Calvin Klein executive and wife of John F Kennedy Jr. To clarify: these aren’t the exact items that were physically in Bessette-Kennedy’s possession – but they are the same brand and style of the ones she owned.
Rabinowitsch spent countless hours poring over old paparazzi photos from the 1990s, as well as Sunita Kumar Nair’s book, , to identify the specific footwear Bessette-Kennedy had in her closet. “It was a good six months of daily searching,” she says. “It was so meticulous because her styles were pretty much the rarest of the rare to look for.
” Among the collection are the Carolyne Manolo Blahniks, which Bessette-Kennedy wore to a 1997 ceremony to mark President John F Kennedy’s birthday. (The name “Carolyne” was not a nod to Bessette-Kennedy, but rather Blahnik’s artist friend Carolyne Roehm.) She also frequently wore black Prada loafers while walking around Tribeca, perhaps heading to lunch at Bubby’s or dinner at the Tribeca Grill.
And then there are the snakeskin Prada kitten heels she often threw on with a pair of cropped blue jeans and a black overcoat. (Rabinowitsch says that she’s “never gotten so many messages” after putting them on her Instagram sto.