Who Was C. Z. Guest?
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It's one of Slim Aarons's most iconic photographs. You know the one. The setting is Palm Beach (duh), on a sparkling pool deck, Grecian columns rising in the background, the Atlantic sprawled out just beyond. In the center of the scene is a woman, perfectly tanned and perfectly blonde, dressed in perfectly crisp whites, with her young son and two dogs in tow to lend the whole thing a bit of that signature Aarons je ne sais quoi. The woman, of course, was C. Z. Guest, a descendant of Boston Brahmins, the wife of a distant cousin of Churchill, and, most famously, one of Truman Capote's legendary swans.
In honor of the long awaited premiere of Ryan Murphy's Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, which tells the story of the spectacular fallout between the Breakfast at Tiffany's author and his clique of glamorous women who ruled midcentury New York society, we're taking a deeper look at Guest, who is portrayed in the series by Chloë Sevigny.
Her pedigree
C. Z. Guest was born Lucy Douglas Cochrane in 1920. Her mother Vivian was an actress (she has one credit on IMDb), while her father Alexander was an investment banker who came from a family of Boston Brahmins. Her brother used to call her "Sissy," and eventually she adopted that nickname and styled it C. Z.
After a brief stint as a showgirl with the Ziegfeld Follies, she settled down, at age 27, with polo player Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, a distant cousin of Winston Churchill who came from a family of aristocratic British steel magnates (his mother was a member of the Philadelphia Phipps dynasty). It was her first marriage, his second. The couple had two kids: son Alexander and daughter Cornelia, an '80s It girl who recently closed Dennis Basso's spring 2024 show.
Her friends
The Guests got married at Ernest Hemingway's Havana estate—the author was their best man. They were also close pals of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who were godparents to Alexander and Cornelia, and socialized with Diana Vreeland, Oscar de la Renta, and the Maharaja of Jaipur.
Her style
Like all of Capote's swans, Guest was celebrated for her beauty and impeccable style and a regular on the International Best Dressed List. She was especially famous for her breezy all-American elegance. She was pairing cashmere sweaters and floor-length satin skirts long before Jenna Lyons popularized the look. "At heart she was this great beauty who had a tomboyish quality," Oscar de la Renta told the New York Times.
Her fame
Despite her Waspy upbringing, and the sprawling estates she and her husband kept in the moneyed enclaves of Long Island, Southampton, and Palm Beach, Guest had a hint of bohemian mischief about her. Case in point: in her youth she posed nude for Diego Rivera. The painting was displayed at a bar in Mexico City until her engagement, when her future husband's family bought it. She was immortalized by other legends, too, like Cecil Beaton, Andy Warhol, and Salvador Dalí.
Her passions
Guest was an OG horse girl and, with her husband, owned stables in Chantilly, France, and Middleburg, Virginia. While recovering from a horseback riding accident in 1976, she wrote a book on gardening called First Garden, with illustrations by Cecil Beaton and a foreword by Capote. It would turn out to be the first of several works, including a children's book and a weekly column in the New York Post, dedicated to her chief passion. "Gardening will make you appreciate something that many people have grown to ignore: that we are all part of the mystery of the earth’s cycle of life," she wrote. "No scientist in the world can make winter follow spring."
Her friendship with Capote
Guest was largely spared in La Côte Basque, 1965, the infamous betrayal—in which Capote aired his beloved swans' dirtiest little secrets—that would spell the author's demise and set him on a downward spiral from which he would never recover. Perhaps that's why she was the only one to remain a loyal friend, staying by his side while Babe Paley, Lee Radziwill, and Slim Keith all deserted him. The Guests even escorted Capote to Minnesota to check him into rehab in 1978.
In 1976, Capote wrote the foreword to First Garden, both of which were excerpted in T&C, and in it recounted the first time he met Guest. "As Raymond Chandler remarked of his femme fatale in The Long Goodbye: “There are blondes, and then there are blondes.” Mrs. Guest, shimmering in the blue smoky light, was one of the latter," Capote wrote. "Her hair, parted in the middle and paler than Dom Perignon, was but a shade darker than the dress she was wearing, a Mainbocher column of white crepe de Chine. No jewelry, not much make-up; just blanc de blanc perfection."
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