Lee Radziwill was a woman of many titles during her lifetime: princess (through her marriage to her second husband, Prince Radziwill), actress, interior designer, PR executive, and, of course, the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But it’s that of style icon that remains one of Radziwill’s most enduring titles; one that’s partially explored through the lens of her friendship with writer Truman Capote in the FX series, Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans.
Born in New York City in 1933 to stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and socialite Janet Norton Lee, Caroline Lee Bouvier’s life had all of the makings of a trendsetter from the start. From her younger years, Radziwill, who went by her middle name, Lee, attended private schools on the Upper East Side and in Connecticut before heading to Sarah Lawrence College. Radziwill’s professional introduction to the world of fashion came during a brief stint as the assistant to Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor Diana Vreeland in 1950. Her polished style and penchant for French designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy and Courrèges served her well once she was thrust into the spotlight (first as the wife of Polish aristocrat Prince Anthony Stanislaw Albert Radziwill, and, most famously, as the sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy).
Radziwill counted creatives like dancer Rudolf Nureyev, architect and interior designer Renzo Mongiardino, photographer and costume designer Cecil Beaton and fashion designer Giambattista Valli among her close friends. And Radziwill’s professional pursuits followed a similar creative path. In the late ‘60s, she embarked on a brief acting career that saw her make her on-stage debut as socialite Tracy Lord in the Chicago revival of The Philadelphia Story. In 1976, Radziwill, whose ornate homes in England and New York City (and later, Paris) were featured in magazines like Vogue and Architectural Digest, founded an interior design firm. And from 1986 to 1994, the socialite directed her fashion expertise into a new role, serving as a public relations executive for Giorgio Armani.
Even after her professional retirement from fashion, Radziwill, who passed away in........