'Nobody's Kid Sister': The Life Of Lee Radzi Will

Bidding Farewell To The Sibling Of Jackie O

- Judy Kean

She was beautiful, elegant and stylish – a jet-setting socialite and fashion icon who counted Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger and Rudolf Nureyev among her friends.

Yet throughout her life Lee Radziwill, who died last week aged 85, was overshadowed by her sister, Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Even though Jackie died nearly 25 years before she did, Lee was forever described as the former First Lady’s little sister, no matter what she herself achieved.

While Jackie may have been American royalty thanks to being the wife of President John F Kennedy, Lee became an actual princess when she married a minor European royal, Prince Stanislas Radziwill. But despite the title, she could never outshine her sister – for example, Lee had an affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, but it was Jackie he ended up marrying.

Although Jackie and Lee were close, they also had an intense rivalry that began when they were small. It was partly fuelled by their mother, New York socialite Janet Lee Bouvier who, according to Lee, favoured Jackie. “My mother endlessly told me I was too fat, that I wasn’t a patch on my sister,” said Lee in an interview in 2013.

When Jackie was 21 and Lee was 18, they were allowed to go to Paris on their own and the trip helped them bond. “It was the first time we felt really close, carefree together, high on the sheer joy of getting away from our mother,” Lee recalled.

She married first, to teenage sweetheart Michael Canfield at age 20, as a way of escaping her mother. They moved to London where Michael worked for the American ambassador, but it didn’t take Lee long to realise the marriage was a mistake, thanks in part to Michael’s heavy drinking. She began an affair with Polish real estate investor Stanislas, known as Stas, and they married in 1959.