The ‘Love Story’ Effect: How Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s Style Fueled a New York City Retail Boom

Spring has (nearly) arrived in New York City, and so has a wave of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy-inspired mania. Inspired by Ryan Murphy’s FX show “Love Story,” which chronicles the tragic romance of Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr., women all over the city can be seen recreating the former fashion publicist’s most popular looks — from her classic jeans and black turtlenecks to midi skirts and leather coats. No outfit is complete without oval-shaped sunglasses and, of course, her staple tortoiseshell headband.

Carried at the 188 year-old New York apothecary, C.O. Bigelow, since the 1950s, the 1.5-inch acetate headband created by Charles Wahba and favored by Bessette Kennedy has been sold out on the pharmacy’s website for weeks, while the store is flocked by fans.

Alec Ginsberg, Bigelow’s Chief Operating Officer whose family has owned the store since 1939, is viewing the craze as one big party.

“Because of all the hype, you might think that this is just another New York line down the street, with angry people in a mob, but it’s really the total opposite of that,” says Ginsberg, who’s stationed on the store’s main floor daily. “The energy is just really fun. It’s been great watching these 20-year-old girls discover the store, hang with each other and just have a good time shopping.”

The recent spike in business happened almost overnight, according to Ginsberg, who says it’s easy to decipher which customers are borrowing inspiration from Bessette Kennedy. “We get people from all different walks of life. It’s very clear when there are people in the store that are clearly trying to mimic her look and also coming in and specifically asking where the headbands are,” he says.

“What I’ve seen – and what we keep saying here — is girls being girls. There are all these strangers who come to try on different hair accessories. They’re putting them in their hair, asking strangers for advice, saying ‘That looks amazing. Or you should try this one, it’ll look better with your hair color,’” says Ginsberg, who refers to Bigelow as “a playground” and has begun blasting “Studio 54-inspired” playlists during peak hours.

While C.O. Bigelow declined to share exact numbers, sales and store traffic have “increased in a significant way,” according to Ginsberg. While some of Bessette Kennedy’s luxury clothing are out of many younger fans’ price ranges, he believes that C.O. Bigelow accessories offer a more affordable way to pay homage to her style.

“It’s not like you can always walk into a luxury fashion retailer and try on a multi-thousand-dollar dress, but they can come to Bigelow and buy a $30 hair accessory,” he says. “It’s the most accessible thing about her that they can touch.”

While it would be all too easy to lean into the marketing aspect given the success of “Love Story” (as of February, it is FX’s most-watched limited series ever on Hulu and Disney+), the store is in no need of publicity. As the oldest pharmacy in America, Ginsberg says they’ve long taken care of “‘the who’s who’ of New York.” Everyone from Elvis and Eleanor Roosevelt to Sarah Jessica Parker and Julianne Moore have been known to frequent the Greenwich Village joint over the years.

Four miles uptown, Zitomer Pharmacy located in the Upper East Side, has been feeling the effects of the CBK craze as well. Zitomer CEO Sharon Sternheim traces the surge in business to a 2024 New York Times article that listed Zitomer as one of the stores in the city to carry the Wahba headband.

“We just knew that going forward, it would be a staple in everybody’s wardrobe,” says Sternheim, adding that the store sold 60 headbands in one day after the show premiered, and averaged a 20% increase in sales across the hair accessories offerings.

Similarly, Selima Optique, the luxury eyewear company where Bessette Kennedy bought her iconic oval-shaped sunglasses, has seen a drastic jump in business. Whereas Bessette Kennedy wore the “Aldo” style, the company put out a separate “Carolyn” line which featured a slightly bigger lens for those who found the original too small. (The “Carolyn” is worn in “Love Story” by Sarah Pidgeon’s Bessette Kennedy after finding it a better fit than the “Aldo.”) In 2025, Selima Optique launched a final version titled “CBK”, which features an even larger silhouette to round out the family trio.

In the four weeks since the show released on Feb. 12, Selima Optique’s online Aldo orders have increased by 2,388% (and sales across the entire CBK family have increased by over 1,000%) compared to the previous period, according to the brand’s Head of Content Théo Salaun, who is also the owner and founder’s son. “That first weekend [after the show premiered], every single store was sold out of the Aldo and the Carolyn in black and auburn by that Monday,” says Salaun.

The eyewear brand prides itself on hand-crafting each pair, setting up an atelier in New York earlier this year to make bespoke frames “to try to meet demand.” Selima Optique has three storefronts in New York City and two in Paris, the latter not being exempt from the CBK fascination.

“The first week or two, a lot of the interest and attention was local to America. And by the next week, we started seeing a lot of interest internationally,” says Salaun. “We had a girl messaging us from Munich asking if we had the Aldo in auburn tortoise available, because she wanted to make a trip to Paris for it.”