SWAN song

WHEN TRUMAN CAPOTE RUFFLED FEATHERS, IT CAUSED NEW YORK'S GREATEST EVER FEUD

- Kylie Walters

Long before there were supermodels, real housewives or social media, the women of influence were the “swans”. Babe Paley, Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Ann Woodward, Joanne Carson and Lee Radziwill ruled New York when it was the most fashionable place in the world.

Beautiful, well-connected, stylish, rich and envied, their close-knit circle gave them protection – until they let down their walls and admitted an outsider. It was a decision they’d regret for the rest of their lives.

While the ladies were used to being the talk of the town, it was for all the wrong reasons in 1975 when their secrets were splashed over the pages of a magazine. The brand-new Binge series, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, tells the story of how Truman Capote spectacularly betrayed his coterie and the devastating fallout that happened after they banished him from their world.

Brought up in near poverty in a small backward town in the deep South, with odd looks, a high-pitched voice and awkward mannerisms, Capote didn’t really belong among the elite in New York. However, his ability to pen spectacular prose in classics such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood made him the toast of Manhattan.

“I was enchanted by him,” Keith wrote in her memoir. “He wasn’t just bright, he was riveting.”