Lee Radziwill, socialite, fashionista, sister, dies at 85
Grande dame denied rivalry with Jackie Kennedy Onassis
Lee Radziwill, who parlayed her cachet as the younger sister of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis into a varied career as a fashion tastemaker, interior decorator, actress, princess and grande dame of cafe society on two continents, died Thursday in New York. She was 85.
Brought up amid great wealth in the Bouvier and Auchincloss families, Radziwill was raised with her sister in mansions along the East Coast.
She famously foundered as an actress and obtained the empty title of princess only after exchanging vows with an exiled Polish nobleman, her second of three husbands. But her adventurous spirit, sophisticated looks, husky voice and glamorous association with the Kennedy White House put her on magazine covers and on televisions while opening doors to royal palaces, gala soirees, torrid romances and touchstone events of the 1960s and ’70s.
Her most enduring influence was as a queen of style. Even before her sister married John F. Kennedy and became first lady in 1961, the fashion press began taking note of Radziwill’s chic looks that often featured clean lines, oversize sunglasses and free-flowing hair. Vogue magazine credited her with helping U.S. fashion transition from the stodgy elegance of the 1950s to a more relaxed and confident style.
She worked as an assistant to longtime Harper’s Bazaar editor Diana Vreeland, ran the American fashion pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair and inspired designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Marc Jacobs. After seeing a photograph of Radziwill walking her dog in the 1960s, designer Michael Kors dubbed a throwback collection, that included balmacaan coats and stovepipe velvet slacks, “the Lee Radziwill look.”
The writer Truman Capote said she outshone her more-famous sister. “She’s all the things people give Jackie credit for,” he said. “All the looks, style, taste — Jackie never had them at all, and yet it was Lee who lived in the shadow.”
Gossip columnists and books, including Diana DuBois’ 1995 unauthorized biography “In Her Sister’s Shadow: An Intimate Biography of Lee Radziwill,” insisted she was forever jealous of her internationally revered sibling. DuBois even said that Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who married Jacqueline after her first husband was assassinated, was originally Radziwill’s conquest until the day in 1963 when she invited her sister along to sail on his yacht.
Onassis “was dynamic, irrational, cruel I suppose, but fascinating,” she told the New York Times in 2013. “He also had the most beautiful skin, and smelled wonderful. Naturally, I mean. Fascinating ... as my sister discovered!” Radziwill always denied a rivalry.
During the Kennedy administration, the two sisters were confidants and traveling companions. They dined at Buckingham Palace and toured India, riding elephants.
“I can’t deny those few years were glamorous, being on the presidential yacht for the America’s Cup races, the parties with the White House en fête. It was so ravishing,” she said.
By the time Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, she was an A-list socialite in her own right and often called “Princess Radziwill” thanks to her marriage in 1959 to Prince Stanislas Albert “Stash” Radziwill, who had fled Poland after World War II to become a London real estate developer.
She danced at Capote’s legendary Black and White masquerade ball in 1966, sometimes called “the party of the century,” and joined other celebrity hangers-on during the Rolling Stones’ infamously debauched 1972 U.S. tour. Lead guitarist Keith Richards, unimpressed, called her: “Princess Radish.”
Always restless, Radziwill, as People magazine put it, tried “on careers like so many Halstons.” With Capote providing acting tips and Saint Laurent a rack of dresses, Radziwill debuted in a 1967 Chicago stage production of “The Philadelphia Story.” She played snooty socialite Tracy Lord, but critics panned her performance as stilted. One reviewer succinctly noted, “A star is not born.”
She and Prince Radziwill had two children. Their son, Emmy Award-winning TV news producer Anthony Radziwill, died in 1999 just weeks after her nephew, John F. Kennedy Jr., with whom she was close, died in a plane crash. Survivors include daughter, Anna Christina “Tina” Radziwill.
Forever linked to the former first lady, Radziwill once said she had forged her own identity. “I’ve been far more successful than I ever imagined,” she said. “I’m nobody’s kid sister.”