Every Detail on Carolyn Bessette’s Bridal Bun in Love Story Leave a comment
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the style icon she was, is often lauded for transforming bridal fashion as we know it. True to her pared-back, unfussy MO, the forever muse married John F. Kennedy Jr. in September 1996 wearing a silk slip dress designed by her dear friend Narciso Rodriguez—a stark departure from the extravagant silhouettes (read: puff sleeves) and heavy embellishments popular during that era—but that’s not the only style choice that effectively revolutionized the ’90s bride. Her hair, tied in a low, effortless twist, also held major sway.
“It really worked against the trends in bridal hair at that time,” Barry Lee Moe, Sarah Pidgeon’s hairstylist for FX’s Love Story, says of Bessette-Kennedy’s wedding-day bun. “When you look back at ’90s wedding photos, every bride had overly done, big, bridal hair—lots of tendrils, curls, updos. It’s a different silhouette. She really pushed against that without even knowing it, and it became iconic.”
Sarah Pidgeon in Love Story episode 6
(Image credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX)
For Moe, it was important to style Pidgeon with that same level of “lived-in luxury” in the just-released wedding episode. The key? A bit of DIY, apparently.
“Ultimately, with any of those effortless, pulled-back looks, I always lean to Sarah to guide it because there’s nothing that looks more realistic than when a girl pulls her own hair back,” he tells me. “So I would always have Sarah do something herself just to see what it looked like, and then I would finish it.” It’s a smart tactic, since that’s apparently exactly what the real Bessette-Kennedy did on her own wedding day. “When we researched, everyone who was there said that that’s kind of what happened. She just threw her own hair up,” Moe adds.
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in 1998
(Image credit: Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
Those finishing touches on set still remained pretty minimal—just a bit of Unite’s Blonda Oil to add healthy shine without making the style appear too “done.” That was always the North Star with Pidgeon’s looks, Moe tells me. “It had to look a little messy,” he adds. “It had to look like there was humidity evident in the air, because it was a summertime wedding.”
That said, the real ticket to re-creating Bessette-Kennedy’s bun isn’t a secret product or hot tool (too contrived). In true CBK fashion, it’s about leaning into your own intuition without worrying too much about how you’ll be perceived (which, I’ll admit, is a lot more difficult than it sounds, especially on your wedding day). “If your instincts are telling you, ‘I just want an effortless, pulled-back look,’ then start to do it yourself, take pictures, and find someone who can help guide you there,” Moe suggests. A stylist can help refine the look so it holds up throughout the day (or, in Pidgeon’s case, multiple days of filming), but you are ultimately the expert in your own hair. Honoring that as best you can is how you wind up on bridal mood boards 30 years after exchanging “I dos.”
Adds Moe, “You look at [Bessette-Kennedy’s] wedding photos, and that could be from the ’30s all the way up until now. It just works. It steps beyond the bounds of time.” Scroll below for more glimpses of the wedding looks from Love Story episode 6, now available to stream on Hulu.
(Image credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX)
(Image credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX)
(Image credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX)
(Image credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX)
(Image credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX)
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