One night in the fall of 1996, RoseMarie Terenzio was giddily preparing for a date with a “good looking media pundit” when she received a call from her boss’ gorgeous new bride, Carolyn Bessette.
The former Calvin Klein publicist summoned Terenzio — then the personal assistant to John F. Kennedy Jr. at George magazine — to the couple’s TriBeCa loft.
“Whenever I would be going out on a date, she’d say, ‘What are you wearing? Come down and we’ll pick something out for you to wear,’ ” recalls Terenzio, who describes the style icon as her “fashion fairy godmother.”
PHOTOS: GET A PEEK INSIDE CAROLYN’S CLOSET
Bessette urged Terenzio, then 27, to try on a vintage faux-leopard double-breasted coat to seal her look.
“She said, ‘It looks perfect on you. You should keep it. I’ve been photographed in it so many times, [the media] are going to start making fun of me,’ ” Terenzio says.
The statement piece is still a favorite of Terenzio, who now heads her own publicity firm, RMT PR Management. And luckily for her, it was just the first of many timeless items Bessette donated to her over the course of their close friendship before her tragic death in 1999.
Despite Bessette’s rarefied fashion background, she was surprisingly grounded in her approach to style, Terenzio tells The Post. She never attended fashion shows after she left her job at Calvin Klein, and she regularly wore many of the same everyday basics — her go-to casual separates were Levi’s jeans and T-shirts from the Gap and Petit Bateau. Her closet was neat but not a walk-in.
And unlike many of today’s parasitic celebrities, she never accepted freebies to pad her enviable wardrobe. “She always said, ‘I have to pay for it . . . and if not, unfortunately, I have to send it back,” says Terenzio.
Bessette also was generous with her friends, lending them clothes or giving them away. She even made over Terenzio with a shopping trip to Barneys and expensive highlights — a moment that is documented in her new best-selling book, “Fairy Tale Interrupted” (inset right).
“I get e-mails from women telling me their favorite story in the book was the shopping trip that Carolyn took me on. It was a fantasy, a real Cinderella story,” Terenzio says. “She wanted my career to take off.”
But Terenzio admits she became the envy of George magazine staffers after Bessette took her under her wing. “People in the office were jealous. They’d say, ‘Oh, she’s trying to look like Carolyn.’ And who wouldn’t want to look like her?”
JFK Jr.’s better half was more than just a trophy wife, insists her friend. “She loved making people feel good about themselves. She was so generous and down to earth,” says Terenzio. “That was her mission.”
Here, Terenzio, 44, exclusively reveals the luxury pieces Bessette gave her — and the stories behind them.
kirsten.fleming@nypost.com