You can tell a story from different angles and points of view. Take Lee Radziwill's life: the American socialite, who died on Friday at her home in Manhattan at 85, was often mentioned in reports and features about her as Jackie Kennedy's younger sister. Yet there was much more about her, especially when it came to her style.
Born Caroline Lee Bouvier in 1933 in New York, Lee dropped out of college and started working as Diana Vreeland's assistant at Harper's Bazaar.
She tried to become an actress, but didn't have much luck; at times she appeared in fashionable adverts such as one for DuPont fabrics.
In the '70s she started an interior design firm and worked as a public relations executive in the fashion industry (she also worked for Giorgio Armani from 1986 to 1994, directing special events for the Italian king of fashion).
Her first marriage to publishing executive Michael Canfield was cancelled, while her marriages to Polish émigré nobleman Prince Stanislas Radziwill (from whom she had two children - Anthony Radziwill, who died in 1999, and Anna Christina) and to choreographer and director Herbert Ross ended in divorce.
Radziwill lived very glamorous years after her sister Jackie married John Kennedy as she was allowed to go to parties at the White House and attended state functions. After Kennedy's assassination and after Jackie married Onassis, the two sisters drifted apart.
Free-spirited Radziwill had famous friends, among them writer Truman Capote, artist Andy Warhol, dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, the architect and decorator Renzo Mongiardino and the stage and costume designer Cecil Beaton.
In 1972 Lee Radziwill asked directors Albert and David Maysles to shoot a movie about the Bouvier family, but the two directors ended up filming a sort of documentary - "Grey Gardens" - about Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale, aunt and cousing of Lee and Jackie, that became a of cult film and an inspiration for many fashion designers (despite the fact that Radziwill tried to stop its release...).
You can discover more about Radziwill's life in Diana DuBois' In Her Sister's Shadow: An Intimate Biography of Lee Radziwill (1995) or in Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger's The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters: The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee (2018).
But there is another way to get to know her and that's through the designers she favoured (Radziwill had many celebrity friends gravitating around the fashion world, including Carolina Herrera, Giambattista Valli, Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola).
Often featured on articles about the world's best-dressed women (her death wasn't announced by press agencies, but by Women's Wears Daily, proving her connection with fashion remained strong throughout her life), they say that Radziwill advised Jackie on her fashion choices, also encouraging her to wear brands such as Givenchy while the First Lady wanted to wear exclusively American designers.
Radziwill liked for example Italian fashion and she often bought shoes from Dal Co', the (now defunct) Rome-based bespoke shoemaker founded in the '50s (a brand favoured also by Diana Vreeland).
Radziwill had her lasts made and would just order her shoes, and at times her friend Giambattista Valli would pick her orders from the shop in Via Vittoria.
Radziwill also loved wearing Irene Galitzine's designs. The Georgian designer daughter of princess Nina Lazareff and officer Boris Galitzine emigrated to Italy after the October Revolution.
She studied in Italy and started to work in 1945 with the Sorelle Fontana as a model and PR. A few years later she opened her own atelier creating Haute Couture designs inspired by French fashion.
Galitzine became popular after she reinvented evening wear coming up with an elegant pyjama ensemble in luxurious fabrics such as silk and with bejewelled collars and beaded hems.
The informal style, symbol of new elegance, dubbed "Palazzo Pyjama" by Diana Vreeland, was conceived for Haute Couture, but soon made its transition to its boutique version, becoming a trend and a uniform for Radzwill (who was often pictured in elegant trouser suits).
In 1963 Jackie Kennedy invited the designer to the White House to see some drafts and sketches of her designs: in a letter to Galitzine, Jackie stated: "Every evening Jayne (Wrightsman), Marella (Agnelli), Lee (Radziwill) and I wear your uniform".
Radziwill also used to wear André Courrèges and the Italian designer also known as "the feminine Courrèges", Mila Schön (born Maria Carmen Nutrizio in Trau, Dalmatia in 1916).
The decade between the '60s and '70s was very important for the designer as she defined her personal style, characterised by clean geometric lines and aimed at a dynamic, strong and feminine woman: inspired by the world of art and in particular by Lucio Fontana’s holes and slashes and Kenneth Noland's chevrons, Schön designed futuristic and monochromatic outfits with geometric cuts.
Art had a growing influence on Schön’s creations: Gustav Klimt’s paintings turned into precious embroideries; Alexander Calder's mobiles were used in her prints and Victor Vasarely’s images inspired the patterns for coats and skirt suits.
Some of the Mila Schön designs Radziwill favoured were characterised by sequinned arty and abstract motifs: the socialite donated quite a few of her evening dresses created during the '60s by Mila Schön to The Met Museum, while the 1966 embroidered net evening dress matched with matelasse coat that Radziwill donned at Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, is preserved in the archives of the Victoria & Albert Museum, in London.
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