Headbands sold out, perfume for 5,000 euros – the CBK trend after “Love Story” shows how sensory overload turns us into consumption machines.
Three observations:
1. CBK
“Love Story” is a mini-series from Ryan Murphy and is the hype of this spring. A version of the relationship story between Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. is told, with particular attention to how they deal with the press and image: both the Kennedy family and Bessette, who works at Calvin Klein, work primarily on their external representation in the series – which is due to the fact that the external representation is the only content that had to be metabolized here.
The actual love story that is told to the audience is that of the nineties and that New York that we know from “Seinfeld” (1989-1998), “Harry & Sally” (1989) and the first two seasons of “Sex And The City” (1998-1999): an apolitical, fictional sepia New York, worn by sports socks, monochrome, so-called “timeless” Outfits on very slim people, Asian noodles from white boxes and jogging between newspaper kiosks that determine the discourse.
Accompanied by sounds that were at times disreputable as “cuddly rock”: The Stone Roses “I Wanna Be Adored” (1989), Mazzy Star “Fade Into You” (1993), Madonna “Secret” (1994). It’s music like filter coffee steam rising over an endless spiral telephone cord. One indulges in this old, best illusion of western, urban life, while Trump posts on his own social media platform that he wants to “eradicate” an “entire civilization,” Iran, “tonight.”
2. Ghost in the Shell
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, or CBK for short, becomes a so-called “ghost influencer”. Your style is translated into links that recommend buying: Nineties Sleekness. A clearly limited color palette, narrow silhouette. No neon, no logos, no patterns. Clothing that actually serves a person functionally as clothing – nothing useless, purely ornamental. Quietest makeup. No Botox. Hair shaken dry.
The headband that CBK often wore is now sold out online. Likewise the coffee table book “CBK. A Life in Fashion” on the website of the fast fashion giant Zara. In the first episode of “Love Story” the perfume oil that she is said to have always worn is mentioned: “Egyptian Musk Oil”. It hasn’t been made for years, but now sells for around $5,000 on eBay. Bought.
3. External enforcement vs. internal appropriation
One would have to ask oneself whether it is CBK’s style to buy expired perfume oil – or to reorder the clothes that someone wore in Manhattan in the nineties and then wear them in Kreuzberg or Breckerfeld. Hartmut Rosa writes in “Situation and Constellation” (Suhrkamp, 2026) that we increasingly operate in contexts in which the internal penetration of a thing in order to derive our own actions from it is replaced by the automated execution of instructions.
In many doctor’s practices, for example, you can no longer reach anyone via a corded telephone, but can only book an appointment using Doctolib – and therefore, as a statutory health insurance patient, you can no longer get an appointment at all. The machine says: no quota. But feel free to come as a self-payer. Still today? You could have spoken to a receptionist over the phone – not just “booking” an appointment, but actually “arranging” it. You were once able to act, now you are at the mercy of a fully automated, full-on-profit-oriented system. Sometimes even happily. That’s true, isn’t it?
Rosa writes that the need for it is due to the oversupply of everything. Our scope has not become larger, but rather smaller, due to infinite options. We are so confused that we are vulnerable to clear instructions: CBK, tell me what perfume you wore thirty years ago. This reduction of your style, this limitation – I like that so much, CBK. Let me buy this limit quickly. On Zara. OK?
The column first appeared in ME 06/26.