High Society Diamonds – Style

The new season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud has been released. It is based on a huge social scandal that shook high society in New York in the mid-1970s. The main characters of this story were the writer and socialite Truman Capote (played by Tom Hollander) and his retinue of “swans,” as he called his girlfriends. Lucy Douglas Cochrane – better known as CC Guest (onscreen Chloë Sevigny) – is an aristocrat and the author of several books on gardening, the first of which had a foreword by Capote. Nancy “Slim” Keith (Diane Lane) had affairs with all the stars of Hollywood. Lee Radziwill (played by Calista Flockhart) is the younger sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. About Babe Paley (played by Naomi Watts in the film), Capote wrote: “Babe Paley has only one flaw: she is perfect. In all other respects she is perfect.”

Capote conceived the novel Answered Prayers, which was never completed, and in 1975 he published an excerpt of “La Cote Basque” in Esquire magazine (another “swan”, Marella Agnelli, the wife of the main Italian industrialist, urged the writer not to do this) . The name refers to the famous restaurant in Manhattan, the Basque Coast, where the elite of the American aristocracy dine and exchange gossip. Actually, the text itself is a retelling of real gossip, and its heroines are easily identified. So Truman Capote revealed all the secrets of his high-society girlfriends, but did not achieve the desired fame, but was forever expelled from high society.

Stylists and costume designers carefully built the image of each high-society lioness, thinking through not only dresses, but also jewelry. To do this, they carefully studied the jewelry wardrobe of each heroine. In one of the episodes, Babe Paley shows her jewelry to Slim Keith and tells why her husband gave her this or that item for infidelity. To which Slim philosophically remarks: “Love adventures end, but the jewelry remains.”

In real life, these “swans” were friends with Duke Fulco di Verdura and enjoyed wearing Verdura jewelry (the jewelry salon on 5th Avenue was opened in 1939). For the shoot, costume designer Lou Eyrich chose jewelry that reflected the style of historical characters: earrings made of baroque pearls in gold braid, similar earrings made of white corals covered with gold mesh, a bracelet with large rubellite, a vintage ring with sapphire and turquoise and, of course, endless threads pearls, including large South Sea pearls. In addition to Verdura, jewelry from Tiffany & Co., Cartier, and Belperron appears in the series.

Nina Spiridonova