Jessel Taank Called It “Carolyn Bessette Summer.” Carole Radziwill Wasn’t Having It.

Darling, someone was always going to try to turn Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy into a moodboard, and it landed, of all places, in a Manhattan restaurant during Episode 2. Jessel Taank called the season’s minimalist wave “Carolyn Bessette Summer” — not an unreasonable observation, given Vogue was making the same point about the Emmys last week and half of NYFW was quietly doing the same silhouette. Carole Radziwill, who was actually Carolyn’s friend, did not receive it as a trend report. She received it as someone filing her grief under a hashtag.

Both things can be true. The minimalist black-white-neutral aesthetic really is having a moment that predates and outlives this cast. And reducing a specific, mourned person to an aesthetic category is a specific kind of tone-deaf that only works if you never actually knew her. Jessel wasn’t wrong about the trend. She was wrong about where she said it, and to whom.

Exhibit A, entered into evidence: Jessel’s own white striped top from the same episode, since the irony of the conversation is that her outfit was doing exactly what she was describing — clean, quiet, expensive-looking. It’s COS’s Open-Collar Cotton-Poplin Shirt, $129, and it is, as of publish, still in stock.