Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s Favourite Beauty Products, Since We’re All Obsessed

Have you been watching Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jnr. & Carolyn Bessette? The series might be over for season one, but that hasn’t stopped us all from continuing our obsession with Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s style. She’s like Clean Girl meets Cool Girl, doing pared-back beauty with the kind of effortlessness it feels like no mortal can actually achieve, but we all want to emulate.

I’m talking minimal makeup, immaculate skin, and blonde so incredible, they gave actor Sarah Pigeon a $10,000 hair makeover just to get it close for the series.

I’ve long adored Carolyn’s style, and for a recent episode of Beauty IQ: Uncensored, Yads Cauchi and I went deep into her confirmed and rumoured beauty product favourites. Many are still available today, and where they aren’t I’m giving you options! Consider this your ticket to CBK’s effortless beauty look.

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy reportedly used a three-step routine for her skin by New York-based facialist Janet Sartin. It was pretty popular in the ‘90s to follow a routine, with all products from the same brand. I remember my first teenage skincare program was all Clinique! 

Obviously, everyone’s skin is different, and there isn’t a lot of info around what Carolyn’s skin type was. But we can still learn something here – routine is key for healthy skin. That means sticking with products, consistency in application and most importantly, using what works for your skin, not necessarily what’s trending. 

I reckon Carolyn would be a big fan of cosmeceuticals. Would she be a Cosmedix girlie? A Dermalogica gal? If not cosmeceuticals, I think she’d be really intrigued by The Ordinary and their simple, straight-forward products. Like, I can definitely see her using Natural Moisturising Factors + HA.

No one maintains a blonde that lush and glossy without some serious haircare! Everything I’ve read about Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s haircare routine involves regular salon visits and minimal styling. 

Many say Carolyn was a big fan of Philip Kingsley haircare, in particular his famous product, Elasticizer. A pre-shampoo treatment designed for dry hair (ahem, salon blondes?), it’s been trusted by famous people for decades, including the iconic Audrey Hepburn. It helps to restore strength and elasticity, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s responsible for Carolyn’s glossy blowouts.

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s favourite makeup products are probably the most talked about part of her beauty routine. Everyone wants to claim her just-bitten, flushed lip colour, and there are a few hero lipsticks that might have been responsible. 

One is Bobbi Brown’s Crushed Lip Color in Ruby. This still exists, by the way, if you want to give it a whirl. Another, which I can definitely see being true, is that she was a fan of Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey.

Firstly, who wasn’t a fan of this in the ‘90s, and secondly, it really does give that flushed lip look with a balmy texture, and given Carolyn was so low-key with her beauty look, it would make sense that she’d love a lip product she could just slick on whenever, wherever. 

Carolyn also wore red lipstick often, and it’s been said that her shade of choice was MAC’s Russian Red. A matte, blue-based red lipstick, it does check out for her skin tone. She also loved a nude, and apparently wore MAC’s Lip Pencil in Spice, which has since been reformulated and isn’t as cool-toned, but fans online say Cool Spice is like the re-release of the OG shade.

Face-wise, like all true ‘90s cool girls, Carolyn was a powder foundation fan. MAC Cosmetics Studio Fix Powder Plus Foundation, to be precise. Her neat trick for eye makeup was apparently to wear the Bobbi Brown Longwear Cream Eyeshadow Stick in Bone, a really neutral, almost concealer-like shade.

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy famously – and I mean famously – wore the most unique of fragrances possible. She basically bought these little bottles of perfume oil from a street vendor in New York. The exact fragrance was Abdul Kareen Egyptian Musk Oil, and guess what – I used to own a bottle. The scent is skin-like, sexy, soft and lived-in, the perfect white t-shirt type of fragrance, subtle enough for everyday wear but definitely a head turner. 

It’s really hard to get a bottle these days. I can’t believe it, but I lost mine moving house one year. People say there’s an eBay vendor selling it, but no one can vouch for its authenticity, and I haven’t been game to fork out the cash to risk it. There are also lots of other “Egyptian Musk” fragrance oils out there, but the scent can differ depending on production, so without being able to try before you buy, there’s no telling if it will be the same easy-to-wear scent.

If you’re looking for something similar and easy to access, as someone who has worn the original I’d say it’s in the same world as other skin-like fragrances that lean heavily on ambroxan, that strange little perfume note that works with your skin’s own chemistry. Juliette Has A Gun Not A Perfume, for example, is something I can imagine Carolyn would be into, or Commodity’s Paper, another subtle, skin-like scent. 

There’s been a lot of online chat about whether emulating Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s style is unoriginal, but I really see her as a textbook example of 1990s effortless chic, and I think that’s why we’re all fascinated by how she managed to pull off looking, well, pulled together. Hopefully, this list gets you somewhere close!