When women really dressed up
Blame it on the mania for “quiet luxury.” The FX series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans is now all over the internet as well as fashion and style columns. Truman Capote may be famous for his 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which became a film starring Audrey Hepburn, but it was In Cold Blood, a sensational non-fiction account of the murder of a Kansas family, that made him the best-known writer in America. Published in 1966, it also made him enough money to buy a luxury Manhattan apartment overlooking the East River. He appeared on the cover of leading magazines and became well connected, keeping a coterie of rich, beautiful and elegant society women whom he called his Swans: Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Ann Woodward, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, and Pamela Harriman.
Always on the Best Dressed List, these socialites epitomized an era long gone, as seen in a scene when they try to purchase gloves at an upscale department store, only to be told, to their horror, that gloves have been discontinued. Gloves started declining in the 1960s, but the Swans kept wearing theirs.
“This was a time when women really dressed to leave the house,” says costume designer Lou Eyrich. There was never a hair out of place or a mismatched outfit, everything was carefully chosen—the purse, the shoes, the jewels. Theirs was a world of excess: yachts, vast estates, lavish dinner parties, art on the walls, perfect floral arrangements, Parisian couture.
Eyrich wanted the outfits to have “an elegant grace like actual swans,” and to stay true to the decades, from the 1950s to the ’80s, showing how society started changing but the Swans didn’t. “They kind of stayed in their arena while the rest of New York started doing disco, then punk.”
Vintage pieces were used, as well as reimagined ones. Babe Cushing, played by Naomi Watts, was a Vogue editor before she married the chronically philandering head of CBS, Bob Paley. She had a refined sense of fashion, which translated to couture from Balenciaga to Givenchy, complemented by Verdura and Schlumberger jewelry. A palette of creams, camels, rose pinks, and pastel blues was chosen for her wardrobe.
Chloe Sevigny’s CZ Guest, who had a relaxed country charm that caught the fancy of Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol, is dressed in houndstooth blazers, crisp button-ups and turtlenecks, as she tends her garden and horses at her Connecticut estate. A strand of pearls was always crucial. American designers Geoffrey Beene and Bill Blass, and European brands like Lanvin and Celine, were utilized to get her look right.
The California-born model Slim Keith was known for sporty looks as she dated the likes of Clark Gable and Ernest Hemingway. Although Keith had a predilection for the mannish, Diane Lane, who portrays her, is more feminine, so Eyrich opted for a compromise through tailored, flowing pants and more structured silk dresses worn with boots rather than heels.
Lee Radziwill married Polish Prince Stanislaw Albrecht and became the most photographed, both for her title as well as for being a fashion trendsetter, so Calista Flockhart had to be dressed in statement pieces like a leopard-print coat reflecting designers of the period which include Adolfo, Halston, and Guy Laroche. Lee was more forward-looking, taking what was trendy but making it effortlessly chic. She easily slipped into relaxed fashion in the late ’70s when she wore jeans, which was a no-no for the other Swans.
For Capote’s legendary 1966 Black & White Ball, the Swans wore custom Zac Posen, which were “a little more elevated and fantastical than the originals.” The pieces had to reflect the Swans’ competition with each other in vying for Capote’s as well as high society’s approval during what The New York Times described as “the most exquisite of spectator sports.”
Babe, the Queen Swan, had an opera coat with a fur collar, which was changed to marabou feathers that opened up like swan wings, inspired by Da Vinci’s drawings of majestic birds and Erte’s illustrations.
CZ’s strapless gown by Mainbocher was reinterpreted in a mid-century classicist style with a touch of Charles James. As a nod to her equestrian pursuits, he added two florets at the back looking like ribboned medallions given to winning horses. The bottom draping resembled a swan’s neck. “It’s supposed to look evil—gorgeous, deliciously evil aquatic birds, each one of them.”
With no photographs of Slim available (she avoided paparazzi by taking a side entrance), Posen just took off from how she loved wearing pants by designing a tuxedo jumpsuit underneath a billowing opera cape with black and white blocking.
Lee’s ensemble stayed true to real life since “she’s a marker of the time period,” says Posen, who designed a sculpted robe of gold, silver, and ivory appliques that give a rich and decadent look that did justice to the mod metallic-sequined Mila Schön column underneath.
For Demi Moore’s Ann Woodward, who was not invited to the ball but decided to go anyway in the series, Posen created an intentional piece in chiffon accessorized with “a kind of Artemis helmet for her protection as the uninvited guest to show up and be kind of hidden in a crystal mesh with feathers that would shake with her fragility.”
The Swans, in fact, had a certain vulnerability that was hidden behind a perfectly composed façade. Eyrich observes how “they had to appear to the world that they had it all together and were powerful in society as women, but many ended up in relationships with no power, husbands having affairs and moving on to the next wife.” It was an armor, one that Babe Paley would put on every day, even just to face her cheating husband for breakfast, and one she used to march on with life. It was one she would meticulously compose to go to the hospital, even if she would only have to take it all off to get radiation treatment for her cancer. More than just an armor, it was a sign of self-respect and hope, and it kept her dignity intact, even as her life deteriorated and the world around her crumbled.