Step Inside the Elegant Houses of Legendary Capote ‘Swan’ Lee Radziwill
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Lee Radziwill may have been best known as Jackie Kennedy’s younger sister. Throughout the 1960s, however, she was also part of one of Truman Capote’s so-called “swans”—a cohort of glamorous high-society women that the novelest befriended...and eventually betrayed in an infamous Esquire article, “La Côte Basque, 1965.” Eventually, Radziwill blazed her own trail as an interior decorator, with clientele such as dancer Rudolf Nureyev, Americana hotels, and Lord & Taylor. But the swans, once again, are on everyones minds as part of the Hulu and FX series Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. In April 2009, ELLE DECOR had the privilege of stopping by Radziwill’s effortlessly-appointed New York and Paris apartments. Step inside, below. For more stories from our archive, subscribe to ELLE DECOR All Access.
To followers of society columns and fashion magazines, Lee Radziwill is the very model of international urbanity—perfectly coiffed and outfitted in Giorgio Armani (for whom the native New Yorker once served as director of special events) and Marc Jacobs. But get the smoky-voiced style icon talking about what makes her happy, and the conversation turns to refreshingly down-to-earth topics.
Dogs, for one, who are always given names beginning with z (golden retriever Zoom and cockapoo Zinnia are the current canines in her life). Exotic animals mesmerize her too: She owns a large Peter Beard photograph of a galloping giraffe, a wood camel that once graced a Neapolitan crèche, and an early-19th-century painting of a family of playful tigers by Swiss artist Jacques-Laurent Agasse. Gardens and tress are also high on Radziwill’s list, particularly chestnuts and their flamboyant white-and-pink blossoms. “I always try to be in Paris when they bloom in May,” she says.
Not that Manhattan, where Radziwill lives part of each year, doesn’t have its own appeal, namely invigorating energy. But one city just isn’t enough for her. For more than a decade she has kept one foot in the U.S. and the other in France, jetting across the Atlantic as the spirit moves her. “When New York gets too stressful, I know it’s time to come to Paris,” she says. Home in Manhattan is a floor-through apartment in an 1890s building on the Upper East Side, a few blocks from where she lived as a child. Radziwill’s Paris residence is a balconied flat near the gracious Jardins du Ranelagh, a beloved haunt of Marie Antoinette and other French royals, shaded by—you guess it—chestnut tress. “I love to walk, so I take my dogs there first thing in the morning,” she says.
Rooms awash with sunlight are a shared trait at both addresses. “It’s my first priority,” Radziwill explains. “I’ve never had a place that didn’t have fantastic light.” Windows in both abodes are so large that even on a cloudy day, the gilt-wooded and ormolu of picture frames and table legs gently glimmer and the polished wood of a Regency table and Biedermeier settee gleam.
The placement of objects is carefully considered—not too many, not too few. Overcrowded rooms “where people feel still and formal,” Radziwill says, are among her bête noires. In Paris, elegant 20th-century steel commodes are noble foils for lean Christian Liaigre sofas, and delicate white voile shams in the master bedroom rest against a headboard of coarse countrified linen—a compelling textural contrast. In New York, the fireplace is crowned by an opulent mirror once owned by British decorator Felix Harbord (“he worked on my London apartment years ago”) and flanked by Louis XVI chairs stamped G. JACOB.
Lee Radziwill
Lee Radziwill in the living room of her Paris apartment with her cockapoo, Zinnia; the sofa is one of Christian Liaigre’s early designs, and the steel commode, gilded-bronze cocktail tables, and giraffe sculpture are vintage.
Living Room, Paris
In the living room, a pair of 1930s chairs by Paul Depre-Lafon; the coctail table and sofa are by Christian Liaigre, and the series of Anglo-Indian watercolors was a gift from the Duke of Beaufort.
Dining Area, Paris
The table in the dining area is set with antique Limoges porcelain.
Primary Bedroom, Paris
A Modénature bench and bedding by D. Porthault in the master bedroom.
Library, Paris
The library’s walls, curtains, and upholstery all feature a La Manach fabric; the photograph is by Peter Beard.
Living Room, Manhattan
Radziwill’s Manhattan living room features a pair of sofas and an ottoman custom made by De Angelis, a 19-century rug, a Louis XVI chair by G. Jacob, and an overmantel mirror that once belonged to British decorator Felix Harbord.
Dining Room, Manhattan
The dining room features 19th-century chairs and a distinctive Milanese silk.
Sitting Room, Manhattan
Radziwill designed the New York sitting room’s daybed, which is covered in a vintage Rubelli stripe also used for the walls and curtains.
Library, Manhattan
In the New York library, walls, curtains, and a sofa in a Le Manach fabric; the painting is Sir Edward Landseer’s study for Hector, Nero and Dash with the Parrot, Lory.
Library, Manhattan
In the same room, a Swedish settee.
Library, Manhattan
An English églomisé lamp and a framed watercolor by Radziwill rest atop an Art Deco chest of drawers.
Unusual patterned fabrics applied en suite is another Radziwill signature; her favorite design is a lively chinoiserie cotton by Le Manach she first saw in the home of friend and fellow style arbiter Lulu de Waldner. Radziwill, who had her own interior-design firm in the 1970s, adopted the material for the walls and furniture of her library in Paris and her bedroom in New York. Indian art is also a leitmotif, the most splendid being oversize watercolors of fruit and flowers given to her by the present Duke of Beaufort. In the Manhattan entrance hall hang moody églomisé paintings of turbaned nobles and sloe-eyed ladies, their presence an echo of the well-publicized tour of India and Pakistan that Radziwill and her sister, Jacqueline Kennedy, took in 1962. “That trip made an enormous impression on me,” she says, recalling riding an elephant at the palace of the maharajah of Jaipur and being garlanded with necklaces of brilliant orange marigolds.
It was around this time that the former Caroline Lee Bouvier broke free of her chintz-slippered childhood and began forging a bolder path. In 1959, she married Stanislas Radziwill, a British real restate investor, and moved to a house near Buckingham Palace. “Stas loved beautiful objects, and I had a good eye,” she notes. “It was a good combination.” Soon she coaxed Renzo Mongiardino, then known primarily as a set designer, into her charmed world. “I think I got him at his very best,” Radziwill says, “before he started decorating for great art collectors like Stavros Niarchos and Baron Thyssen and making houses that looked like museums.”
Mongiardino famously lined her London drawing room in Indian paisley cotton in 1965, a scheme that still inspires decorators. Most stunning of all were his interiors for the Radziwills’ 18th-century house in Oxfordshire, where Lanning Roper designed the gardens, artist Lila de Nobili brushed climbing vines and pastel blossoms onto walls appliquéd with Sicilian scarves, and George Oakes of Colefax & Fowler painted floral motifs onto silk panels made into cushions. As Radziwill says, “I told Renzo I wanted a house of flowers.”
She still lives in full bloom. Adding to the gardenesque delights of her transatlantic spaces, she paints botanicals under the tutelage of artist Chuck Price, propping them here and there. “My watercolors aren’t anything special,” Radziwill observes with a smile, “but I am enjoying them.”
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