Daily News Lifestyle

COPY CAT CHICK HOW TO RE-CREATE THE CAROLYN BESSETTE-KENNEDY LOOK


By Orla Healy Thersday Editor

Thursday, October 17th 1996, 2:01AM

The dye was cast the minute she walked down the aisle.

In marrying the scion of America's most ogled family, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy the willowy, 6-foot, size 6 blond with a Barneys addiction was destined to become, as Newsweek magazine christened her this week, "a fashion icon for the '90s."

We would put it another way: Carolyn's clothes, her hair style, the way she plucks her eyebrows and glosses her lips, will be the most studied and emulated personal statement since ... well, since her late mother-in-law awed the world with her style savvy more than 30 years ago.

You can safely bet Carolyn's signature look best described as an intoxicating cocktail of raunch and regal will be rampant on the runways of Bryant Park later this month when top U.S. designers preview their spring/ summer '97 collections.

Her banana-blond hair color as well as her grungy "bed-head" chignon will blow away Jennifer Aniston's high-maintenance flip as the global gotta-get 'do. Likewise, Carolyn's natural, no-makeup look must have the manufacturers of Vamp nail polish, black eyeliner and heavy-duty foundation ready to slit their wrists.

The key to emulating CBK's style is to understand what she is doing: creating a look good enough for the front-page of Vogue that appears to have been nonchalantly thrown together.

As if.

Basically, Carolyn has taken her former employer Calvin Klein's minimalist approach to dressing and given it a funky twist adding ideas from white-hot design houses like Gucci (the no-bra-possible navel-plunging shirts and vinyl pants) and Prada (instigators of the current "I'm-so-beautiful-I-can-look-good-even-in-these-dour-clothes" attitude).

Her wardrobe of clean-cut, flagrantly body-conscious clothes in a contrived mish-mash of neutral colors is occasionally jazzed up with edgy notes such as animal-print accessories.

Bartola Inguaggiato, a colorist for the Louis Licari Group who created Daily Newser Trine Giaever's new shade of bright blond only recommends this color for women with fair skin. After treating Trine's hair to a single color process he added highlights, warning her that because hair grows an average half-inch each month, she'll need a touchup every 4-6 weeks.

Senior Licari stylist, Josephine Saran, who gave Trine Carolyn's "bed-head" hair-knot (see below) says women obviously with the correct-length hair can copy Carolyn's simple daytime coif using a large, round brush to blow-dry the hair away from the face, before dabbing a little gel on the fingers and running it through the hair for a soft, sultry, windblown effect.

According to Elie Maalouf, makeup-artist with the Trish McEvoy company that specializes in a clean, unfussy look, Carolyn's maquillage is "very natural with a hint of color." That, of course, doesn't mean no makeup it just means a different application process (see "The Face" sidebar) and lighter shades than you may be used to wearing.