Love Story's Costume Crisis: How Rudy Mance Rescued the Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy Look

When preliminary images from FX and Hulu's Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette began circulating in mid-2025, the internet's verdict on the costuming was blunt: the clothes looked wrong, oddly Zara-esque, with fabrics that didn't drape the way Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's minimalist 1990s wardrobe actually did.

Showrunner Connor Hines and Ryan Murphy responded by bringing in costume designer Rudy Mance, known for his work on American Fiction and The Alienist, to overhaul the wardrobes of leads Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly before the series premiered on February 12, 2026. The fix worked: Mance's obsessive attention to period-accurate draping, sourcing slim black dresses, J.Crew knits, Calvin Klein pieces and Manolo Blahniks, and getting modern fabrics to hang like their 1990s equivalents, turned Bessette Kennedy's understated style into a genuine cultural moment.

College campuses across the United States reported a resurgence of dark denim, simple silhouettes and neutral colour palettes directly inspired by the show. For a limited series about one of the most photographed style icons of the 1990s, getting the wardrobe right wasn't a detail it was the entire premise.