“Love Story,” FX’s new docudrama series chronicling the doomed romance of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, paints a very particular picture of what it was like to work in the 1990s at Calvin Klein, where Ms. Bessette was employed for several years.
The show, which is produced by Ryan Murphy, portrays the brand’s Manhattan office as a temple of duotone minimalism. Clean architectural lines, white flowers and a perpetual haze of cigarette smoke. Thin women in smart blazers and turtlenecks carrying around neat piles of papers organized with black paper clips. Only black paper clips.
Reality, according to some who experienced it firsthand, was actually pretty similar.
“Love Story” has sparked new conversations among former Calvin Klein employees, some of whom have posted TikTok videos to give younger viewers a sense of what it was really like to live and work in an era now nostalgically memorialized by the resurgence of minimalist eyewear, straight-leg denim and handbags that never had to bear the oppressive weight of a laptop.
Mary Beth Kelley started working at Calvin Klein in 1994 as an intern while she was a student at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She remembered the office as feeling “electric” and “glamorous” and recalled watching the model Kate Moss walk by her desk.
“It was a cultural moment, but we didn’t know it was history — we were just trying to keep up with the business,” Ms. Kelley, now 52 and a real estate agent in Boston, said. She added that Ms. Bessette had once bummed a cigarette off her in the office.
Tiffany Craft, 57, said she worked at Calvin Klein from 1996 to 1999 as an international account executive and recalled a “work hard, play hard” mentality among her colleagues. It was not unusual for her to be at the office until midnight or later, she said. She remembered seeing Mr. Klein pacing the halls looking at designs on one of those late nights. (Representatives for the Calvin Klein brand did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.)
Ms. Craft recalled being struck by the design of the office itself.
“It was very minimalist,” she said, though she wouldn’t have used that term in 1996. “We talked about it as a very ‘clean’ design,” she recalled.
“The first time that I had an interview and the elevator door opened, I just thought to myself, ‘This is not a normal office building,’” said Ms. Craft, who now lives in Los Angeles and works for her family’s music licensing business. She remembered “the famous calla lilies” perched on the reception desk “in a very specific position”: “We only had white calla lilies in our building.”
On TikTok and in a phone interview, Tracey Kane, who said she joined Calvin Klein in 1998 to work in merchandising, remembered that a painting crew had come by regularly to touch up scuffs on the pristine white walls in the night. It was a very “controlled” environment, she said.
“You weren’t allowed to walk around with messy papers in your hands,” she said. “They wanted everything in dark gray folders.” (Ms. Kane, who is 55 and lives in Tampa, Fla., also recalled the black paper clips, a detail recreated in “Love Story.”)
“There was a level of polish where everybody came to work looking a certain way,” Ms. Kane, who now works as a host for HSN, added. That way did not involve much makeup.
In another TikTok video, Ms. Craft demonstrated the makeup routine she used in that era: a light Chanel foundation, a MAC eye shadow in the shade “ricepaper,” and a lipstick best and most simply described as lip-colored.
Ms. Craft recalled having a clothing allowance and wearing a “very specific” uniform for the office, including suits and “the famous Calvin Klein turtleneck.”
She described arriving to the office each day surrounded by hundreds of colleagues in similar garb.
“Imagine the sea of women — some men as well, too, but predominantly females — walking down Seventh Avenue to come to 39th Street,” Ms. Craft said. “We were a mirror image of one another.” (She described that image as “thin, blond and brunette.”)
Kim Pilson, who said she worked at Calvin Klein from 1998 to 2001, described the thrill of driving to New Jersey early in the morning to shop at employee sample sales at the brand’s warehouse, where she and her friends were able to buy Calvin Klein clothing at steep discounts.
“Once you got in, you just went running,” said Ms. Pilson, now a 54-year-old wedding planner who lives in Manhattan. “You had your plastic bag and you just filled it with anything that might interest you.”
In a TikTok video, Sylvie Fitzgerald, Ms. Pilson’s daughter, recently modeled some of the pieces and commented on how well the styles had held up.
Ms. Pilson described a specific look shared among employees. “It’s sad to say, but I think that they really only hired pretty, good-looking people,” she said.
“I felt like some of the things I was asked to do, you would never be able to get away with now,” Ms. Pilson said. She described starting each day by fetching a lentil soup and a fresh-squeezed orange juice for her boss. “I never really saw anyone eating food at their desk,” she added of her fellow lower-level employees.
Lorna Neligan, an author who lives in Dublin, said she crossed paths with Ms. Bessette during a brief stint as a temp at Calvin Klein in the early ’90s. Ms. Neligan, 64, recalled Ms. Bessette as a “great person” and described her once letting Ms. Neligan into the office closet to borrow an outfit to wear to a wedding.
“If she liked you, she liked you,” Ms. Neligan said. “If she didn’t, unfortunately, she really had no time for you. I was lucky.”
One day at the office, Ms. Neligan said she answered the phone and a journalist from a local news outlet was on the other line talking about having spotted a Calvin Klein employee in Central Park with John F. Kennedy Jr.
Ms. Neligan said she had looked immediately to Ms. Bessette, who promptly ran into Mr. Klein’s office.
Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture.
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