Feud: Capote vs the Swans to showcase timeless high society fashion
The biggest fashion thrill of 2024 can be found in the wardrobe department of Ryan Murphy’s television drama Feud: Capote vs the Swans. Get acquainted with classic Upper East Side style.
Chic. It’s a vastly overused and often rather abused word. A person possessed of true chic has substance and style. It is an attitude learned along life’s journey. I have to say, I think it is earned with age.
If chicness is earned, then nobody worked for it harder than Truman Capote’s “swans”, the coterie of much-married society ladies who lunched and dominated the best-dressed lists in the 1950s and ’60s; the cream of New York’s Upper East Side. Capote “collected” them: Lee Radziwill, sister to former First Lady Jackie Kennedy; Italian Princess Marella Agnelli; Gloria Guinness, branded “the ultimate” by fashion industry bible Women’s Wear Daily; the fashion icon CZ Guest; and Queen Bee, Babe Paley, wife of CBS founder William S Paley. Capote once said the problem with Babe was that she was too perfect, otherwise she was perfect. The In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s author was the confidant and companion of these women, who had everything except, perhaps, happiness.
That is until he betrayed them all when he published the first chapter of his thinly veiled, and ultimately never finished, book Answered Prayers in Esquire magazine, exposing the sordid and embarrassing secrets behind their perfect facades. Most of his swans never spoke to Capote again.
The saga will be given the glossy Ryan Murphy treatment from February 1 in his new series, Feud: Capote vs the Swans based on Laurence Leamer’s best-selling book Capote’s Women.
There could be no fashion thrill to surmount Chloe Sevigny playing Guest (pictured) and Naomi Watts as Paley. Tom Hollander plays Capote, Diane Lane is Nancy “Slim” Keith, and Calista Flockhart returns to prime time as Radziwill.
The show’s costume designer, Lou Eyrich, told me earlier this month that all of the fashion is “period accurate”. Additionally, everything from how a table is laid for a dinner party to the jewels a swan would choose for New Year’s Eve has been comprehensively researched.
For as designer Marc Jacobs once said of Radziwill: “With her, everything was studied, everything was considered, even the way she smoked a cigarette.”
Capote’s expose offered a peek beneath the veneer – the marital affairs, distance from children, a lack of agency. Really, the only thing to really envy about these women is their chicness. An it-factor that comes from living and learning. It was Guest who once said: “Style is about surviving, about having been through a lot, and making it look easy.”
How to … Raffia Bags
Jane Birkin might be the eternal reference when it comes to summer basket bag, but brands from luxury to the high street are doing a take on this breezy summer staple.
Perfect for the beach and Aperol spritz sessions, you could also carry one with smart leather details and a little more structure to the office to keep the nonchalant summer feeling going long after your holiday leave has run out.
Q&A
MAGGIE HEWITT, founder and creative director of Maggie Marilyn
Who is your summer style icon? At the moment it’s Princess Diana circa that famous summer in Saint Tropez as I’m watching the final season of The Crown. All of her looks were so timeless.
Which pieces do you wear on repeat in summer? Nautical stripe swimsuits and my Somewhere Stripe Shirts during the day, and my Early Mornings Shacket in cherry red wool for early morning walks and fishing trips – it’s the kind of fabric that only gets softer and better with time, and memories cling to its fibres.
Favourite summer memory? Being on the water with my dad. Pulling into Russell, a small town that used to be the capital of New Zealand, jumping off the boat and running down the wharf, barefoot with salt on my skin and in my hair, and finding the perfect nook at The Duke of Marlborough (the bar and hotel affectionately known as The Duke) to watch the sunset.
Favourite era for fashion? Right now – I want to look back and remember this time in the fashion industry as a period of change underpinned by more equity, inclusion, and social and environmental responsibility.
Person you admire? Voices advocating for social and environmental change in the fashion industry and those brave enough to question well-walked paths.
Game, Set & Match
In 1926, French fashion designer Jean Patou’s tennis costume for Suzanne Lenglen scandalised society with its bare arms and brevity, yet Vogue at the time described it as “extraordinarily chic”.
Tennis remains an eternal style reference and there’s plenty of ways to dip in, whether you’re hitting the courts or not.
Get the look, below left: Polo Ralph Lauren linen twill blazer, $799; AO cropped tee, $139; Twill ball cap, $159; Bengal stripe shirt, $209; AO athletic short, $239.
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