![]() “ loved beautiful objects, and I had a good eye. “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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ![]() 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. Overcrowded rooms “where people feel still and formal,” Radziwill says, are among her bête noires. The placement of objects is carefully considered-not too many, not too few. “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. “It’s my first priority,” Radziwill explains. Rooms awash with sunlight are a shared trait at both addresses. “When New York gets too stressful, I know it’s time to come to Paris.” “I love to walk, so I take my dogs there first thing in the morning,” she says. 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. 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. “When New York gets too stressful, I know it’s time to come to Paris,” she says. and the other in France, jetting across the Atlantic as the spirit moves her. For more than a decade she has kept one foot in the U.S. Not that Manhattan, where Radziwill lives part of each year, doesn’t have its own appeal, namely invigorating energy. The walls, curtains, and upholstery of Radziwill’s Paris library feature a La Manach fabric the photograph is by Peter Beard. “I always try to be in Paris when they bloom in May,” she says. Gardens and tress are also high on Radziwill’s list, particularly chestnuts and their flamboyant white-and-pink blossoms. ![]() 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. But get the smoky-voiced style icon talking about what makes her happy, and the conversation turns to refreshingly down-to-earth topics.ĭogs, for one, who are always given names beginning with z (golden retriever Zoom and cockapoo Zinnia are the current canines in her life). 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. For more stories from our archive, subscribe to ELLE DECOR All Access. In April 2009, ELLE DECOR had the privilege of stopping by Radziwill’s effortlessly-appointed New York and Paris apartments. But t he swans, once again, are on everyones minds as part of the Hulu and FX series Feud: Capote vs. 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. Lee Radziwill may have been best known as Jackie Kennedy’s younger sister.
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