Calvin Klein publicist Carolyn Bessette Kennedy had such a sharp intuition about the inner working of the New York fashion world that a fashion publicist says he used it for many years after she left the industry.
MAO Public Relations co-founder Mauricio Padilha recalls visiting the designer’s showroom before starting his own business.
“Carolyn saw me looking at her show seating charts, and she came over and sat with me, and explained how she sat a show,” he said.
“Vogue never sits next to [Harper’s] Bazaar… Celebs sit together near cameras and not near press or stores in case they say something stupid,” he said in a social media post explaining her logic, “and when I asked her why the stickers [on the seating plan with guests’ names written on them] were bent up, she told me it was [to make it easier to] switch their seats in case someone more important rsvp’d.”
Bessette Kennedy had a PR position at Calvin Klein before she was forced to sacrifice the high-powered position for her marriage. John F. Kennedy Jr. was becoming a publishing magnate after co-founding George magazine in 1995, and “she left her job basically because everything had to revolve around John and George magazine,” his high school best friend, Sasha Chermayeff, recently told Page Six.
Her seating chart method, however, stuck with Padilha. He told Page Six he continued to use it for many years.
The last time Padilha saw her was at the Helmut Lang store in New York’s Soho neighborhood, where she was waiting for them to bag her items, he said. “I was buying [his brother and co-founder] Roger a birthday gift and she helped me pick out a cute Felix the Cat t-shirt for him. She thought it was funny,” he said.
Bessette Kennedy and JFK Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999. The 90s romance is being chronicled in Ryan Murphy’s latest project, “Love Story.”
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