When Calvin Klein walked through the women’s collection showroom in the late 1990s, the 22 year old selling his clothes to department stores did her work and stayed out of his way. “We were not allowed to talk to him,” Kara Mendelsohn says. “You were not to look at him, you weren’t to speak to him.”

Mendelsohn, who posts on TikTok as @kmendelsohn, listed the rules of that job in a video posted on February 16, 2026. She says she worked in sales for the women’s collection, in the showroom at the corporate office, selling the line to stores including Bergdorf’s, Neiman’s and Saks. She also places herself on the company timeline: “I just missed Carolyn Bessette by, I think, two years.”

In the caption she writes that the first thing people ask when they hear where she worked is “did you know Carolyn Bessette?” Her answer is that the two never overlapped. She was 22, she writes, and Bessette “was exactly 10 years older and my fashion idol. I wanted to emulate her style as did most of us at that time!”

She introduces the rules as things “that I think would send people into a coma now,” all in service of what she calls “a very specific image that we were supposed to uphold.” Nail polish comes first. “Our nails had to be completely nude,” she says, holding the back of her hand up to the camera. “There was no color allowed on our nails.”

Makeup followed the same line. “You really needed to wear extremely minimalist makeup,” she says. “Everyone’s makeup looked like Carolyn’s.” She describes very thin eyebrows, no bright eyeshadow and no bright lips, with everything “super neutral,” and says hair was typically pulled back in a ponytail.

The flower rule is the one she says made her laugh while watching a show in which Carolyn gets red roses delivered. By her account, the elevator on every office floor opened onto a receptionist sitting with calla lilies on her desk. “So there was always white flowers,” she says, and in sales, where she worked, staff could not keep flowers of any other color on their own desks. “Calvin was very strict image wise,” she says. Her ruling on the roses is that they “would have been maybe a problem, but maybe not if it was from him.”

Jewelry, she says, “had to be super, super minimal,” and anyone wearing more was told so: “They would ask you to take it off if you were wearing anything other than something super simple like this.” On “like this” she tucks her hair behind her ear to show a small stud earring. She films in a pale blue sweater with a fine gold chain at the neck.

She saw Klein often, she says, because her department was where the collection was and “he would be in and out all the time.” Walking up to him for a conversation was “a really big no, no.” The standing instruction: “Unless he spoke to you, you kept to yourself.”

She ends by saying “I could go on and on and on” and offers a part two to anyone who asks for it. The caption promises “endless fashion stories.”

Using Her Showroom Rules to Finish a Late 1990s Minimalist Outfit

For anyone building that look from thrifted pieces, Mendelsohn’s list works as a last check before leaving the house, because every item on it is something to take off. In her order: nails bare, with no color at all. Makeup neutral, with no bright eyeshadow and no bright lip. Hair pulled back in a ponytail. Jewelry cut down to one small piece, with her stud earring as the size guide. If a piece is bigger than that, it is the kind she says staff were asked to take off.

The same list is a styling brief for a reseller photographing a 1990s minimalist dress or suit on a model. Bare nails, hair back and a single small earring match how she says the people selling those clothes were required to look. If the shot needs a prop, she names the only one her office allowed: white flowers, calla lilies at the front desk, and nothing red.

Keep the scope of her account in mind when repeating it. These are one former employee’s memories of collection sales, and she ties the desk flower rule to “where I worked” without saying whether other departments followed it.