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Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette Charts Two Love-affairs Parallel to Calvin Klein’s Brand Crisis
John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette’s love story is certainly the main focus of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, with Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon as the tragic couple. However, Ryan Murphy’s FX on Hulu limited series also presents other complicated relationships that were going on at that time behind the scenes.
As Carolyn, a Calvin Klein brand publicist, gets closer to the political heir and the ’90s most eligible bachelor, Calvin Klein, her boss’s marriage to his second wife, Kelly Klein, is falling apart at the same time.
On the show, Kelly (Leila George) accuses Calvin (Alessandro Nivola) of saying that Carolyn’s very public love affair with JFK Jr. is just a way to distract the brand. Kelly fires back, “With all due respect, you’re the last person who should be lecturing anyone on discretion.”
Calvin responds, “You knew from the start what you were signing up for,” spotlighting the conflict between private lives and public image.
Kelly Klein’s Romance With Calvin Klein: A Studio 54 Meet-Cute and Creative Partnership
Kelly Klein’s romantic relationship with Calvin Klein started like a typical New York City meet-cute story – completely by chance.
At that time, Kelly, who had just turned 21 and was working in Ralph Lauren’s design studio, had a meeting with Calvin but was told that the position was already filled. Unexpectedly, at Studio 54, the famous nightclub they met again. It was the very next day that the designer, who was raised in the Bronx, made the call offering Kelly a job as his assistant.
“The time I spent with Calvin totally transformed me,” Kelly told Vanity Fair in March 2008. “When he entered a room, it was as if suddenly all the lights switched on. We were transported to the movies every single day.”
Kelly was instrumental in sparking Calvin’s creativity, such as the men’s underwear for women concept. In fact, she remarked that nothing was sexier than wearing your boyfriend’s briefs.
When the couple started dating in 1981—she had just begun working for him and he had launched his brand 13 years earlier—their union shocked a lot of people in the fashion world.
Calvin Klein’s Complex Personal Life and Reflections on Sexuality
Speculation about Calvin Klein’s sexuality kept surfacing despite the fact that he was married to his high school sweetheart textile designer Jayne Centre, with whom he had a daughter Marci Klein, born two years after their 1964 wedding, and also because of his previous relationships with men.
Kelly Klein told Vanity Fair, “The moment you fall in love with someone, all the rumors that you hear drop off.”
Calvin himself considered his sexuality in a quite subtle way. Aiding his words ,he said that he “crashed” a model Josie Borain ad “androgynous in a certain but fine and class” for his perfume Obsession in 1985, the photo showed many arms and hands on the model, which confused gender and created interest. “You didn’t know if they were men or women. You didn’t know how many of them there were. But it got your mind going, he said, then he added that time was ‘sex everywhere, drugs too.’”
Regarding his intimate life Calvin declared, “That’s the way it is with me. I’ve lived my fantasies and I’m not ashamed. I’ve had sex with men and women. I’ve fallen in love with women. I’ve married women. I have a family. I have been through just about everything that has helped shape me. But, I am a reflection, whether good or bad, of what I have presented.”
Calvin Klein’s Desire for Privacy and the 1978 Kidnapping of His Daughter
Calvin Klein always cherished his privacy so much that he once told Playboy in 1984, “I think it’s more enjoyable if you have the reputation and people don’t know everything—a little mystery isn’t so bad.”
Considering what had happened to him at the time, it’s not surprising that he wanted to keep a bit of a mystery about himself.
Back in 1978, Marci, his then-11-year-old daughter, was kidnapped after being lured off a New York City bus by a former babysitter. Within a matter of hours, Calvin had handed over the $100,000 ransom and was meeting up with Marci at a random apartment.
“I ran out and I saw him and I jumped into his arms,” Marci, a TV producer who worked on Saturday Night Live, told Vanity Fair. “I’ve never felt so safe in my life.”
On the other hand, Calvin called it a “nightmare that really changed our lives a lot.” It is quite possible that such a tragic incident caused him to keep his personal life very private all the time.
Calvin Klein and Kelly Klein Divorce and Recovery of Public Relation
Calvin Klein and his second wife Kelly Klein announced their divorce in 1996, 10 years after their wedding in Rome. In a statement, the couple expressed their intention to live separately while still being “the best of friends”.
Calvin was likewise quite frank about a public relapse at a New York Knicks game in 2003, only weeks after he and his partner Barry Schwartz sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen for $400 million.
“I think it was the thought of what was going to come next that made me lose control—the future,” Calvin told Vanity Fair in a later interview. He also talked about his entry into Meadows clinic in Arizona: “For years, I was already thinking about this. I guess I wanted to find other challenges or other things. After all, I have made so many collections. I have done everything I wanted to do. I was ready to let go. But when it actually happened I just went completely crazy. Then, once again, I dealt with getting my life together.”
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Calvin Klein Reflects on Life and Love, Including Relationship With Model Kevin Baker
Calvin Klein in the years after his recovery described the time after as “the best time in my life”.
Before Calvin Klein came upon his long-term relationship with model Kevin Baker, the legendary fashion designer had a two-year love affair with model Nicolas Gruber. Klein in 2011 marked Gruber’s 21st birthday at Indochine in NYC, where he invited a star-studded list of guests including Anna Wintour, Donna Karan, Vera Wang, Alec Baldwin, and Andy Cohen.
Gruber in 2013 revealed to New York Magazine’s The Cut that they were introduced by mutual friends. “When I tried to become a model, one of my steps was a photo shoot here in NY. I was in the Army and I had about three months of being out. So we started to talk and eventually, one thing led to another.”
As of the interview, their ways had already separated and Klein, meanwhile, has kept his personal life hidden. Calvin Klein and model Kevin Baker who is 37 years old have been a couple since 2016.
Calvin Klein and Kevin Baker: A Discreet Yet Public Partnership
Despite the fact that Calvin Klein has never revealed publicly the relationship with model Kevin Baker—whose twin brother Joel is also a model—their show of making couple as one through a very low-key but steady public exposure strategy.
Initially, they were recognized together at the Mint Luxury Conference in March 2016 in Mumbai, India. Since then they have been spotted at various occasions such as the premiere of American Psycho on Broadway, Future of Fashion Runway Show, and on several vacactions from Klein’s Hamptons estate to the island of St. Barts.
Previously, the couple—who keep homes in New York and Los Angeles—was spotted leaving the gym together in L.A.
Looking back on his life and career, Calvin stressed the value of being real. Back in 2016 in an interview with i-D, he stated, “Maybe above all it is most important to find your own identity. And people keep saying, ‘You should be doing this or that,’ but you know what? Do what you believe. Even if you are not sure of yourself, still trust that your way is still better than what people are telling you to do. That’s really important in my opinion.”
