In the five weeks since “Love Story” has been available to stream, not only has it become FX’s most watched limited series ever on Hulu and Disney , it has also created an entire online content ecosystem, especially on TikTok. The most popular topic of discussion is Carolyn Bessette’s style — specifically, how to recreate it.
Two women standing out in this sea of short-form videos are Kara Mendelsohn, 50, and her daughter, Ella Mendelsohn, 21, who are giving audiences of all ages an education in what it was like to work at, and wear, Calvin Klein when the fashion house was at the peak of its powers.
In mid-February, just a few days after the series premiered, Kara Mendelsohn uploaded a video captioned “What it was like to work at Calvin Klein in the late ’90s,” which drew more than 1.3 million views. She confirmed much of what “Love Story” suggests about the image-conscious designer and outlined office and employee restrictions that, she said, “would send people into a coma now.”
What was it like? Only minimal makeup and jewelry were allowed, nail polish was not and speaking to the boss — or his celebrity clients who frequented the office — was forbidden. The font was Futura Light 9.5, the paper clips were black and the florals were limited to white calla lilies.
Kara Mendelsohn kept many of the Calvin Klein Collection pieces she was required to wear on the sales floor nearly 30 years ago, and she has passed them down to her daughter, who is a fashion influencer. On Ella Mendelsohn’s TikTok account, where she has 2.7 million followers, the two women have been posting videos of their mother-daughter styling sessions, teaching viewers about the quality and engineering of garments that are meticulously constructed despite their apparent simplicity.
One look they posted was an A-line camel hair skirt — similar to a pencil skirt that Bessette wore in a famous photograph alongside John F. Kennedy Jr. — with a black cashmere turtleneck, an outfit Kara Mendlesohn often wore to the office. Her first job at Calvin Klein was in sales, beginning in 1998, just missing Bessette, who held the same role before moving to the publicity department, where she worked until 1996, when she resigned to marry Kennedy. At the time, the cultural influence of Calvin Klein, the brand, was immense.
“It was the epitome of cool,” Kara Mendelsohn said, noting that Calvin Klein employees of that era were treated as special around New York, with access to exclusive parties and events. “When you were in sales or PR, you would get a clothing allowance,” she said. “You had to wear the clothes. It was a requirement. You can’t demand that someone on a $20,000 entry-level salary wear a $2,000 suit.”
Kara Mendelsohn had the foresight to save those pieces. “I really understood the value of the garment, being in sales,” she said. “You are selling something to someone that’s very expensive, so you need to really understand: Why is it so expensive? Why is it worth this amount of money?”
When “Love Story” started building buzz, the two women knew they had a unique perspective to offer and started recording videos immediately. “I texted her,” Ella Mendelsohn recalled, “and I was like, ‘Can you bring more of your Calvin Klein stuff? I really think we should do this.’” Her mother was on board.
“The opportunity obviously was there because the obsession with it was all over my For You Page,” Kara Mendelsohn said. “I started seeing people be like, ‘Oh, I worked there,’ but they didn’t really work there, so I’m going to do a few stories and incorporate it into the ones that we do together.”
About a year ago, the duo started doing vintage styling sessions on the platform. Kara Mendelsohn would style her daughter in her designer wardrobe and talk about the history of the pieces.
The Mendelsohns started posting on social media when Ella Mendelsohn was 12 years old. She would wear outfits of her mother’s that did not yet fit her, and her mother was in control of her account. She joined TikTok during the coronavirus pandemic, when she was 15, and quickly gained a following. Her success inspired her mother to grow her own platform as a Generation X influencer.
After her years at Calvin Klein, Kara Mendelsohn went on to work for other luxury labels, including Michael Kors and Marc Jacobs, in sales and as a consultant. Now Ella Mendelsohn works with those brands creating content.
“I had Ella when I was working at Marc Jacobs,” Kara Mendelsohn said. “Now Marc loves her, and she goes to that show every year. And I used to go to the shows. It’s like a full circle, such a cool thing.”
Vintage designer clothing is an increasingly popular niche among Gen Z content creators, but Ella Mendelsohn acknowledged that Calvin Klein wasn’t a brand that her peers discussed or coveted before “Love Story” started airing.
“Someone in the TikTok comments was like, ‘This outfit’s so boring,’” Kara Mendelsohn said. “I responded, ‘This outfit is anything but boring. It is deceptively boring — that is the beauty of this outfit.’”
The secondhand market value of Calvin Klein Collection has soared since the show began airing, with some of Bessette’s Calvin Klein pieces selling for five figures. But the promise of a big payday isn’t enough for Kara Mendlesohn to sell off items from her archive.
“I have had a lot of DMs with people offering to buy,” she said. “It’s all Ella’s, and if it lasts long enough, it’ll be her daughter’s one day.”
Despite their participation in the conversation around “Love Story,” the Mendelsohns find the online obsession with Bessette and her personal style to be macabre. “I was very careful to do it about me and my time there and not try to capitalize on her and him and the relationship because it just feels so wrong to me,” Kara Mendlesohn said.
“Her outfits were very simple — she was wearing a black turtleneck and jeans,” said Ella Mendelsohn, who learned about Bessette only because her mother would talk about her. “I don’t think she was waking up every day spending five hours trying to look perfect. That was just her clothes and what she wore.”
What do the women plan to do after “Love Story” wraps on March 26? Well, there are other designers in Kara Mendelsohn’s archives, including original pieces from the first Thakoon collections, as well as coats, shoes and baby-doll dresses she bought with her Marc Jacobs clothing allowance.
“I have so many cool runway looks from all the designers I’ve worked for,” she said. “I can’t fit in them anymore, but I think the fun part is that I get to put them on her so many years later and have them look so incredible. And we have so much fun doing them together. We were going back and forth and telling stories and laughing.”