Whenever Ryan Murphy’s hands touch a real-life tragedy, ready to transform it into a cinematic sequence, the audience is reluctant, as his approaches to such events take liberties that lean more toward sensationalizing stories than depicting them as they were. Love Story , focusing on the ill-fated marriage of Bessette-Kennedy, borders on transforming the tragedy of one of the most politically and culturally prolific families in the United States into a tableau vivant of thanatological chic....

The industry seduced me at a young age. I kept going back to Galliano’s Dior, the Macbethian apocalypse of McQueen, and the way Grace Coddington’s genius married Annie Leibovitz’s lens more often than was healthy. I was in love with the heavy, glossy pages, the witty paragraphs, the interchanging topics and pictures. I never once thought of relating to the model; no, I wanted to be her. The girl tainting the cigarette with her mauve lipstick as she leaned against a crumbling Grecian column,...