Death of an American Love Story

Viral Pastries, Temu Carolyn-Bessette Kennedy and selective Slop Sabbaticals from Muzzle Velocity.

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I don’t know about you but the more horrifying news I consume, the more I consume period. I do more doom scrolling. I read more hot takes on pop culture. I watch more telly. I fill carts.

I think you could say the “news is working.” Which is the same thing as saying that the “wars are working.” Which is that I’m gorging like a foie gras goose on terror, overwhelm, screens, ZIRPSLOP, crap, rage. Or that I have reached muzzle velocity.

A bipolar friend of mine confided that their most reliable tell for the beginning of a manic spell is that they start buying things. I also do this the week before my period instead of going to bed when my anxiety and ADHD gets really loud. Blessedly, I no longer purchase everything anymore and my friends and I have a term for this late-night behavior —The Real Realing, ssense sale trawling, Sephora ogling, Prime-flexing — we call it “Pervert’s Harvest.”

The rule of Pervert’s Harvest is that you have to wait until the cold light of the next day to really see if you wouldn’t much rather have the money. It also helps to imagine returning everything and how big a pain in the ass it will be. I also sometimes imagine the hard plastic contraption or the lip liner or the weird avant-garde woolen shape sitting in a landfill and that also helps.

In any case, peak-overwhelm was where I was at, spiritually, when the Ryan Murphy Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy photos from his upcoming show hit.

And let me tell you, it was bracing.

A cold plunge to the dome.

The outsized upset I experienced was positively enlivening. It felt so reassuring to self-soothe by self-harming with such a small-stakes enterprise.

And I loved how it was mirrored back to me from all corners of the internet. It felt so good reading that other people were worried. When I posted about the first look images of the actor playing CBK, Sarah Pidgeon in IG stories, the distress and LOLSOBS in my DMs from designers, authors, critics were legion.

It’s great how it’s so bad. It makes me feel like a laser. I love to be in complete agreement about how irredeemably swagless this whole situation is. I shiver with disgust-pleasure at exactly where that hem falls in relation to the tongue of her high-tops. Even the whiteness of the laces repulses me. Just look at the way this textile pools and slides over her with absolutely zero friction or purchase as she walks.

I mean, this was the nineties. A halcyon time when I could find Guy Laroche at Goodwill. When even a Wet Seal dress was cut on the bias to where it shimmered along with you, the warp and weft undulating in concert, moving at a diagonal, when zippers had to be fucking long as fuck or else everything had to be secured with a million fiddly little buttons, even the cheap shit, or a thousand hook and eyes. Before everything was elasticated and ruched. Before sizing was obsolete. Before fast fashion ruined vintage.

Anyway, this was circa Galliano, Gaultier doing couture, Ghesquière at Balenciaga, Stella McCartney at Chloé, right around the time Versace died. Margiela’s revolutionary Stockman collection.

Which is a very long way of saying I am very looking forward to heads exploding whenever we get to see images of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s Narciso wedding dress as envisioned by Ryan Murphy.

We are going to be so upset!

It’s going to be like my sports.

Oh, the way I will be forensically zooming and raging!

OK, so below is probably the most iconic photo of CBK’s actual wedding dress.