Who Was C. Z. Guest? The Most Elegant—And Enigmatic—of Truman Capote’s Swans (2024)

Imagine being so refined you’re referred to as a “cool vanilla lady” by one of America’s foremost literary wits: Truman Capote. Elegance was the hook upon which Boston-born C. Z. Guest, a gazelle among the author’s so-called Swans, hung her whole self. A keen horticulturist and equine enthusiast, C. Z.—born Lucy Douglas Cochrane in 1920, but called “Sissy” or “See Zee” by her brother—had the Hollywood beauty of Grace Kelly, and the social diary of Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly: catnip for hungry journalists peddling column inches on the glitterati.

Who better to play a woman crowned best dressed by the New York Dress Institute so many times that she was eventually inaugurated into the Fashion Hall of Fame than perennial Manhattan It-girl, Chloë Sevigny? The Kids actor will star alongside Naomi Watts as Babe Paley and Diane Lane as Slim Keith in Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. But while Guest’s uptown sisters were seriously burned by Capote’s searing commentary in his infamous takedown La Côte Basque 1965, C. Z. kept a greater distance from a tortured soul desperate to be loved by high society.

This was the woman who designed a line of cashmere sweaters (“I will only sell what I like to wear”) and formulated an insect repellent spray for the green-fingered. Her coming-out party at 17 saw her peers dance the night away in a ballroom decked out like the streets of Paris, but she was just as chipper pruning her zinnias. C. Z. was a polite enigma with a personal life (her 1947 wedding to Winston Frederick Churchill Guest was held at best man Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban home) that preceded her, but the self-awareness to know her good fortune. “I never made any films,” the one-time aspiring actor once said of never hitting the big time. “I went out to parties with Victor Mature, Bruce Cabot, and Errol Flynn. I played tennis every day and I loved every minute of it.”

If her restrained brand of polished, outdoorsy chic—she lived in no-frills American designers Mainbocher and Adolfo with a peppering of Givenchy—gave her an air of practicality, the delicious snippets about her personal life (Guest once posed nude for Diego Rivera in Mexico) put her on a pedestal again. For every image of her in jodhpurs riding her beloved horses, there was a curated, color-saturated photograph by Slim Aarons, to whom she became a muse. (See also: Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí.)

When she died in her home in Old Westbury at the age of 83 in 2003, Guest left behind her influence on American style, from the WASP-y uniforms of Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors to Oscar de la Renta’s classic-with-a-twist evening wear. Not to mention, myriad cheerful cuttings from her gardening column and books, the first of which was illustrated by Cecil Beaton. “What’s wrong with women inspiring others to higher standards?” she said in a 1976 interview. “Think of all the beautiful works that Marie Antoinette and Madame Pompadour inspired from artists and artisans.” In Feud, Guest’s unique brand of vanilla cool will get another airing as we fall for the delicious dichotomy of an individual toeing the line between haute and homey.