The Kennedys are once again a topic of conversation, and this time, it’s not due to RFK Jr. reminiscing about doing lines of cocaine off a toilet seat or killing a bear and abandoning its body in Central Park. Love Story, the talked-about Ryan Murphy series that reconstructs the relationship between John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, who died together in an airplane crash along with her sister in 1999, has dazzled Generation Z. A few days ago, news broke that one of Carolyn’s jackets had sold at auction for $192,000. The show’s fans are upbraiding Calvin Klein for no longer producing the same kind of clothes as in the era the series portrays. And in the month that has passed since its debut, there’s been no end to articles in men’s magazines explaining how one might emulate John-John’s style, not to mention the videos of influencers dressed up as him, and even look-a-like contests.

These attempts have led to less-than-stellar results, even though all the ingredients seem to be there: linen pants, pleat-front chinos, dark suits, sporty sunglasses, vests with patterned shirts. Yet somehow, the recipe never comes out quite right. Blame may be placed on many factors: the proportions of today’s suits and ties are skinnier than in the 1990s, and current fabrics would have been barely acceptable as linings three decades ago. Not to mention the enduring reign of skinny jeans and low-rise pants, a far cry from anything Kennedy ever wore. But the real problem lies, as is always the case on social media, in the total decontextualization of the style and world in which Kennedy lived.

“People are defining John Kennedy Jr.’s look as old money, a modern-day term that is in no way applicable to him,” says Jennifer Padjemi, cultural critic and author. “Old money denotes a very discreet style composed of very expensive brands,” she says. Some of the ill-fated heir’s wardrobe pieces were references to the preppy style, inspired by the outfits at Ivy League universities, but they were combined with elements of cool. “That is what reveals John Kennedy Jr.’s personality, which always showed a certain rebelliousness with respect to what his family expected of him: he failed the bar several times, went around New York on a bicycle, founded George, a magazine that approached politics through a pop culture lens… He was searching for himself, and his style reflected that.”

His look is immediately recognizable, but not necessarily unique. “It’s very modern, that is true, especially for the heir of a political clan,” says Padjemi. “He could wear a classic suit and completely transform it just through accessories: a backwards hat, a bandana, a pair of brown shoes, a colorful tie… The resulting outfit was not common in the social circles in which he grew up, but it was in others in which he moved, like those of film, fashion, music and art.”

Just Google what Black athletes and actors like Denzel Washington were wearing in the ‘90s to get a sense of this connection. “The style is extraordinarily similar. John Kennedy Jr. was particularly inspired by how notes of color can be added to a suit,” says Padjemi.

Such eccentric touches, paired with modern classics like Giorgio Armani and Valentino suits, or the era’s informal Banana Republic garments, are also a reflection of John-John’s lineage. Because in addition to being a Kennedy, he was also a Bouvier. Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ family included several singular figures, among them Little Edie and Big Edie — cousin and aunt, respectively — the eccentric protagonists of the documentary Grey Gardens. The Bouviers have always expressed themselves through clothing, and John-John inherited that trait, as has his nephew Jack Schlossberg in the modern era. No matter what fashion influencers may think to the contrary, Schlossberg is John-John’s only successor, in both the aesthetic and literal sense (and also a fierce critic of the Murphy series). Today, the son of John’s sister Caroline — who became known to the public though his comedic Instagram videos, and has now embarked on a political career — can be seen skating through the Lower East Side on the way to ballet class, or clad in suit pants, a windbreaker and a backwards cap or beanie. He is the authentic Millennial response to his uncle.

And as to the other aspirants to that title? Bad news: their efforts have not been fruitful. “The problem is that, if you don’t have the charisma of John Kennedy Jr., putting on a patterned shirt with a vest makes you look more like Kramer from Seinfeld than anything else,” opines Julien Lambéa, a menswear journalist. For Padjemi, this has to do with references. “We live in a time in which the only thing we do is copy and recreate aesthetics. People forget that an original style is the result of the music we listen to, the books we read, the people we know, the trips we take. Going to Uniqlo to buy a head-to-toe John-John look, with no introspection, will never turn out right.”

Perhaps the problem also stems from Gen Z’s inability to imagine the reality of the ‘90s. Just as the influencers who try to emulate Carolyn Bessette can’t avoid metamorphosing her into a clean girl who goes to Pilates and drinks matcha lattes — eluding both her predilection for the sophisticated garments of Japanese designer Yoshi Yamamoto and aspects of her personality that were far less clean-cut — the influencers looking to imitate John still resemble gym bros wearing a backwards hat. They seem to have missed the fact that John Kennedy Jr.’s body was sculpted on squash courts, and not through hours in the gym, creatine and protein shakes.

The kind of man who gravitates towards John-John in 2026 is also revealing — and paradoxical. If he seems like a Republican frat boy taking his first steps into the manosphere, it’s because generally speaking, he is. But why would a budding conservative want to copy the style of one of the members of America’s most famous Democratic families, who was an openly progressive man? “I would say it’s because of the model of masculinity. Both John Kennedy Jr. and Paul Anthony Kelly, the actor who plays him in Love Story, are examples of classic masculinity, poise and elegance. They are the kind of men who are perhaps less present in today’s media and cultural production. There is an element of nostalgia and projection,” explains Padjemi.

The question is if there is a way of being inspired by John-John’s style without slaughtering it in the attempt. And yes, there is. In the case of John as well of that of Carolyn, the key to their style is in constructing very simple looks with very high-quality garments. Jeans with a button-down or chinos and an overshirt with a tweed jacket are a good start, as long as their quality — in addition to their shape and proportions — are comparable to that of the ‘90s. In this sense, there’s nothing better than putting such an outfit together at a vintage or secondhand store.

Above all, it’s important to keep in mind that inspiration and costume are far from synonyms. A simple and subtle wink at John Kennedy Jr.’s style, for example, in one’s manner of tying a scarf or wearing a handkerchief in the front pocket of a suit jacket (a detail he wore intentionally, to honor his father) will give much better results than a questionable gray suit from a fast fashion brand with sunglasses and a Kangol hat. Such notes can be mixed with other cultural references to create an authentic and personal look. The inspiration that John-John left behind should be for everyone to look, more than anything, like themselves.

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The book Water Over Thunder brings together for the first time the writings of American photographer Larry Sultan (New York, 1946–California, 2009), a pivotal figure in photography of the second half of the 20th century. Far from being a mere complement to his visual work, these texts reveal that writing was an integral part of his artistic practice. His correspondence with curators, his continuous notes in notebooks, transcripts of his classes, drafts of short stories, as well as the candid entries in his diaries, where dreams find a privileged place, alongside more polished essays, allow the reader to follow the artist’s thoughts as he reflects on the act of seeing, family memory, and the limits of photography.

The image of water over thunder that inspires the publication’s title places the creative work in the territory of uncertain navigation. Photography and writing are not straightforward paths for Sultan. They unfold amidst doubts, detours, unexpected discoveries, and the continuous questioning of his practice. Hence the importance of accepting uncertainty, initial confusion, and the risk of shipwreck as a natural part of the process. “It has a lot to do with failure,” the author acknowledges.

It was his attention to the everyday and the mundane that drew Sultan to photography. The medium offered him access to spaces of contemporary life that otherwise remained closed to him. For this young man, born in Brooklyn and raised in Los Angeles, his interest in visual culture lay not in museums, but in the billboards of the Sunset Strip. He was wary of the academic rhetoric of the art critics, of the romantic tradition associated with the figure of the bohemian artist; he wrote of it: “It bores me to tears.” This stand was key to his collaboration with Mike Mandel, with whom he would shape Evidence, a publication destined to become a landmark of conceptual photography that questioned the idea of ​​the photographic medium as objective evidence. “Quite simply, a Duchampian strategy,” Sultan wrote. “You change the context of how something is seen, and it becomes art; you put a silly little photograph in a museum, and it becomes an art object.” That project proved fundamental in his career, confirming that “the art of photography lies not only in creating images, but in using them.”

His writing is precise and nuanced, but also imbued with humor and irony. A typed letter to a curator reveals that he considered his training as a photographer a “fiasco,” despite having studied under Harry Callahan at the Rhode Island School of Design. Franz Kafka and Marc Chagall were among his “strongest and most enduring” “companions.” Similarly, he stated that he felt no “affinity or true understanding” for Walker Evans, “so restrained, dispassionate, and seemingly cold. I have very little patience for photographs that made the world seem more ordinary than I felt it to be.”

Regarding his series Swimmers, the photographer acknowledged that both the act of photographing and the images themselves frightened him. Through the portrait of a group of students in a swimming class, he delves into fear, discovery, and mystery, while also striving to produce deliberately physical, sensual, and painterly images. Ironically, he admitted that perhaps he had good reason to be afraid; critics would say of him, “We thought you were a conceptualist, when in reality you turned out to be simply an expressionist.”

Thus, after ending his collaboration with Mandel, Sultan’s practice became more personal without sacrificing conceptual rigor. In Home Movie Stills, he takes frames from his father’s home movies out of context to offer new interpretations. In his writings on Pictures from Home, one of his most famous series—which led the artist to undertake a profound and emotional exploration of the complexities of his parents’ family life over 10 years—he reflects on the psychological complexities inherent in looking at those closest to us. “My photographs were a mixture of staged and documentary work, again attempting to collapse the difference between the two,” he wrote. “For me, truth has to do with performance: how we act, how we project: truth can be staged or found. I don’t think there is a difference between the two.”

The tension between reality and representation also runs through The Valley, the series shot in the San Fernando Valley. There, he photographed scenes related to the porn industry, but from a perspective that privileged domestic intimacy and moments of pause between scenes. His images might evoke the artifice of pornography, but at the same time, they showed real people in genuine moments of vulnerability and contemplation.

Reading Water Over Thunder ultimately means accompanying Sultan on a constant journey of self-doubt. In contrast to the figure of the self-assured artist, Sultan allows himself to feel vulnerable and lets uncertainty permeate his work. His notes reveal frustrations, unresolved questions, and an insatiable curiosity to understand what it means to see and represent the world. This bewilderment is not an obstacle but the very driving force of his journey. “For me, the real magic of photography is that I never know exactly how it’s going to translate the world,” he wrote. “No matter how many photographs I take, the mystery is never exhausted. I don’t know how a photograph happens; it’s unpredictable, and half the time I don’t even realize I’ve taken it. The photographs I thought were going to be great turn out to be so over-the-top, so determined, and boring. It’s always something else.”

“I always wanted to be a writer,” Sultan admits in the book’s final paragraph. “I’ve thought about giving up photography for a while and dedicating myself solely to writing. Perhaps that will bring me closer to the heart of the matter.”

Water Over Thunder: Selected Writings. Larry Sultan. MACK, 2026. 320 pages.

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“Dad, lend me your jeans,” said no child ever. And yet here we are, almost a decade after someone decided that such a request sounded plausible and turned it into a stylistic urban legend. It’s 2026, and dadcore —the style of the suburban paterfamilias, as endearing as it is bland, defined by the wardrobe clichés of old sitcoms — now strides down runways and permeates collections of every kind, confirming itself as the most resilient look since Gen Z took over fashion to shape its visual identity in a specific, clear, instantly recognizable way.

If, once upon a time, adopting your faher’s wardrobe or style was seen as a simple miscalculation (at best) or as the unavoidable penance of Sunday outings (at worst), it is now understood as a statement of principle. In the dadcore aesthetic, the figure of the father represents an anchor to tangible reality, to those mundane routines — weekend barbecues, DIY home repairs, car trips, family documentary‑making with a camcorder in hand — that convey a sense of safety at a moment of extreme geopolitical, economic, and climate uncertainty. It becomes an optimistic totem reminding us that joy lies in the everyday, not in ostentation.

That’s why dadcore is also an act of resistance, a call to rebellion: in the face of algorithmic tyranny, choosing to dress like a boring dad is a slap in face at those other aspirational, elitist aesthetics that feed the false need to project wealth, according to the manipulative laws of late capitalism (see the much‑discussed “quiet luxury” or the classist aberration of the old‑money style).

Indeed, there is something deeply political about choosing orthopedic-looking sneakers over the fleeting hype, in preferring the conventional sturdiness of New Balance or Reebok to the modern fluidity of the brand‑new sneakerinas — a hybrid between trainers and ballet flats championed by Jacquemus. It is a resounding “no” to the planned obsolescence of today’s objects of desire.

Inspired by the wardrobe of the man who abandons his appearance — the arbitration of fashion, that is — once he becomes a father, dadcore revels in the comfort and functionality of garments and accessories as sad as they are outdated.

Shapeless jeans, with a rise as long as a baby’s arm, in a faded stonewashed blue, sometimes ironed with a crease, sometimes in the form of Bermuda shorts (a style known as jorts). Pleated pants that are neither wide nor narrow, neither short nor long, with a fit from no man’s land, right up to their ultimate version: the cargo. Ugly sneakers, like nylon tanks. The promotional T-shirt, like the one from that bar that closed in 2004, or the one commemorating a long-ago NASCAR event. The random visor, the rectangular cycling glasses. The stretched-out, patterned knit sweater.

It was precisely an infamous sweater that fueled the dadcore legend: the one John Cusack wore in High Fidelity, which Jack Black’s character called “the worst fucking sweater I’ve ever seen” because it reminded him of the ones Bill Cosby wore in the sitcom that made the Black actor the world’s favorite TV dad from the early 1980s to the mid‑1990s (before he was cancelled for sexual abuse).

The nostalgic revival of the film — an adaptation of Nick Hornby’s generational novel — at the dawn of the Y2K craze that celebrates the style of the early 2000s gave it aesthetic legitimacy. It was framed it as an extension of normcore, the sociocultural embrace of normality: a way of dressing indifferent to runway‑imposed trends and extravagances, with Adam Sandler as its most relatable standard‑bearer.

Georgian fashion designer. Demna took it from there. As the cornerstone of Balenciaga’s Spring/Summer 2018 collection, dadcore came of age in the hands of the disruptive designer. It bears repeating: Demna doesn’t design clothes; he designs consumer anthropology. His $2,000 jackets that mimic the feel of a cheap fleece are an exercise in brilliant cynicism: they sell the aesthetics of the working class to people who have never had to change a car’s oil.

Today, dadcore is no longer a joke, no longer the ironic parody it was a decade ago. As an aesthetic, it has morphed into something denser, deeper and, paradoxically, more honest. If it once mocked suburban functionality, today it is the uniform of a generation that has understood that adulthood is, in reality, an exercise in aesthetic survival.

While the system pushes us toward algorithmic perfectionism, the paternal wardrobe celebrates error, wear and tear, and fatigue. Dressing like a father in 2026 is like looking for a foothold in a storm. It is nostalgia for a security that may never have existed, but that feels real in the touch of a flannel shirt or the comfort of denim shorts.

No, it’s not a trend; it’s a symptom of a society that, tired of facing an uncertain future, has decided that the most revolutionary thing to do is put on some high-top sneakers, a worn cap, and go for a walk with no destination in mind, like someone looking for an address that is no longer on the map.

What’s curious — and most interesting — about the phenomenon is who is leading it: it’s not middle‑aged men searching for lost youth, but teenagers and twenty‑somethings trying to inhabit a maturity that has been stolen from them by precariousness.

By hijacking their dad’s wardrobes, Gen Z is using apathy as armor. It is their shield in an era of emotional overexposure on social media, a way of saying “I have no intention of making you like me” (deliberate anti-sexiness, the best formula for being hot). It is a return to the days when objects had weight and volume (for those born with a smartphone in their hand, a pen sticking out of one’s shirt pocket and a fanny pack are fetish objects/protective amulets). And yes, it is a commitment to practical sustainability, aligned with conscious and less disposable consumption (prioritizing the durability of garments above all other considerations).

There is, however, a twist — and a fascinating one. The current rise of divorced dadcore, the domestic‑existential aesthetic that evokes the experience of fathers rebuilding their homes after a separation, slightly shifts the narrative. It shows up in those TikTok reels that no longer appeal to the image of the stable, providing father who burns hamburgers in an idyllic backyard, but instead follow the man living in a rented apartment, forgetting to shave, pairing a worn suede Loewe jacket with an old T‑shirt from his favorite rock band. (The term also refers to the musical style of playlists featuring Eagles, Dire Straits, Tom Petty, Jeff Buckley, The Police, Bon Jovi and Fleetwood Mac.)

It could be considered the style of the unmoored: slouch‑shouldered jackets and sweaters that suggest postural defeat, slightly ill‑fitting pleated trousers, very short shorts paired with white athletic socks and loafers, and the gaze of someone who has lost their bearings but still holds on to their pride.

It is the elegance of chaos, the dignification of the midlife crisis, which has inevitably become a catwalk luxury. But it is no coincidence that this season’s collections (spring-summer, extending into next fall-winter) give us permission to be tired. In an industry like fashion, which demands more than ever that we stay alert and fit, there is perhaps nothing more subversive than putting on a pilling sweater and watching time go by, beer in hand.

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