City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The fabulous Bouvier sisters, the tragic and glamorous lives of Jackie and Lee, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-303) and index

collective biography

portraitsillustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

The fabulous Bouvier sisters

bibliography

Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

the tragic and glamorous lives of Jackie and Lee

When sixty-four-year-old Jackie Kennedy Onassis died in her Fifth Avenue apartment, her younger sister Lee wept inconsolably. Then Jackie's thirty-eight-page will was read. Lee discovered that substantial cash bequests were left to family members, friends, and employees-but nothing to her. "I have made no provision in this my Will for my sister, Lee B. Radziwill, for whom I have great affection, because I have already done so during my lifetime," read Jackie's final testament. Drawing on the authors' candid interviews with Lee Radziwill, The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters explores their complicated relationship, placing them at the centre of twentieth-century fashion, design, and style. In life, Jackie and Lee were alike in so many ways. Both women had a keen eye for beauty-in fashion, design, painting, music, dance, sculpture, poetry-and both were talented artists. Both loved pre-revolutionary Russian culture, and the blinding sunlight, calm seas, and ancient olive groves of Greece. Both loved the siren call of the Atlantic, sharing sweet, early memories of swimming with the rakish father they adored, Jack Vernou Bouvier, at his East Hampton retreat. But Jackie was her father's favourite, and Lee, her mother's. One would grow to become the most iconic woman of her time, while the other lived in her shadow. As they grew up, the two sisters developed an extremely close relationship threaded with rivalry, jealousy, and competition. Yet it was probably the most important relationship of their lives