Murder, Betrayal and Best Dressed Lists: How Truman Capote’s Muses Lee Radziwill, Babe Paley and More Inspired ‘Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans’

Seven years after the premiere of Ryan Murphy’s “Feud,” the anthology’s second season — out Jan. 31 — charts the fascinating lives of Truman Capote’s muses. Subtitled “Capote vs. The Swans,” Murphy’s new installment surrounds the author’s high society pals, whose secrets he would eventually expose in the 1975 Esquire article “La Côte Basque, 1965.” The piece was an excerpt from “Answered Prayers,” a roman à clef that Capote once called his magnum opus. The finished novel never made it to publication, yet its legend lives on: the dissolution of Capote’s closest friendships were chronicled in Lawrence Leamer’s 2021 volume “Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal and a Swan Song for an Era,” which serves as the source material for “Feud.” To Capote, they were “swans”; to the press, they were the “ladies who lunch” — and lunch they did, most notably at storied institutions like Colony Club, Le Cirque and La Côte Basque, where the infamous excerpt got its name. Among those swans, Lee Radziwill, C.Z. Guest, Slim Keith and Babe Paley, were celebrated socialites, trendsetters and fashion icons whose influence still resonates today. The wardrobes of Radziwill and Paley inspired Lanvin’s spring 2020 collection, while Guest was the first

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