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She was peeved over these PJs.
The fashion consultant on “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette,” lost sleep over the original pajamas the character of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy wore in the miniseries — a silk nightgown and robe.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, no way, she wouldn’t do that.’ I knew that because her friends had shared what she’d worn personally,” Sunita Kumar Nair told The Post.
“She was just never obvious about what she did and how she dressed, and I think that’s a beautiful thing about her. She understood who she was as a woman and what suited her.”
Rudy Mance, the costume designer for the FX and Hulu miniseries, which airs its finale on March 26, was relieved that Nair weighed in — and changed the character’s nighttime attire to a nightgown made of cotton with lace trimming.
“Rudy was like, ‘Thank God I checked that with you,'” said Nair, a stylist and fashion editor who worked at Sunday Times Style, WWD and W magazine, and consulted for notable names like Estée Lauder, Louis Vuitton, and Christian Louboutin.
Nair was called to consult on the series because she literally wrote the book on Carolyn’s style, “CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion,” during COVID, after realizing that no one had yet.
“I couldn’t believe it. There were plenty of negative ones done on her, but there were none that were celebrating the woman and looking beyond her being married to John Kennedy,” she said.
For the project, she interviewed everyone from Carolyn’s former boss, Calvin Klein, to her classmates at Boston University — and shared one of her favorite ancedotes about the wife of America’s Prince.
“She taught her friend how to have her hair blow-dried by rolling it up in a pencil on the subway and taking the pencil out when she got to the stop,” said Nair, a native of England.
When “Love Story” started production, a former colleague of Nair’s reached out, suggesting its executive producer Ryan Murphy needed to tap into her expertise.
“She was like, ‘I hear that Ryan is getting a bevy of consultants and he didn’t need anyone but you. Has he gotten in touch?'” Nair recalled.
“And I was like, ‘Well actually no, but he knows where I am.'”
It was only after Murphy teased photos of the actress who plays Carolyn, Sarah Pidgeon, filming the show last summer, and was bashed online for not getting Bessette’s clothes, Birkin bag, and hair color right, that Nair was brought on as an “authority on her fashion.”
The fashion guru, who lives in London, flew to the NYC set and delighted in browsing the collection of clothing that Mance’s team painstakingly sourced.
“It was so exciting to be on the site and actually see those pieces and to be like, ‘Oh my God, this is obviously not what Carolyn wore, but this is the replica of it,'” she said.
One of the toughest items to procure was the black jacket Carolyn wore during the infamous Washington Square Park fight scene, between Carolyn and JFK Jr which was captured by paparazzi at the time.
“The jacket that she wore, I know that Rudy or one of his crew went on Japanese Etsy to finally find it,” she said.
Nair even got to attend the show’s premiere at Carnegie Hall, where Pidgeon revealed that she used her book to help capture Carolyn’s essence.
“She would actually read excerpts of ‘CBK’ to get into that kind of cool fashion girl energy,” she said. “Which I think she captured really well.”
English (US)