Lee Radziwill dead: Jackie Kennedy’s sister known as 'epitome of chic' dies aged 85

Lee Radziwill, the American socialite and younger sister of former first lady Jackie Kennedy, has died at the age of 85.

The one-time actress and magazine writer – once called the “epitome of chic” – passed away at her home in New York of natural causes, her daughter said.

During a life lived at its most glamorous, she enjoyed success as an author, interior designer and fashion PR guru, while counting the likes of Andy Warhol, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal as some of her closest friends. She married three times – including once to a publishing house director, and once to a Polish prince.

Among her other lovers were former British chancellor and home secretary Roy Jenkins and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

For years, she was a perennial entry on international best-dressed lists.

But her sister’s marriage to John F Kennedy also put Radziwill at the heart of American power when he became president. Famously, she recalled staying at the White House at the height of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. One evening, she later told an ABC interview, her bother-in-law came off the phone to tell the room: “In three minutes we’ll know if we’re in all-out war or not.”

Radziwill was born Caroline Lee Bouvier in New York in 1933, four years younger than her sister, who died in 1994.

The two were close and remained confidantes throughout their lives but rumours of a rivalry were persistent. “I’m nobody’s kid sister,” Radziwill told People magazine in 1976.

As a child she attended Miss Porter’s boarding school and later went to Sarah Lawrence College before marrying her first husband, Michael Canfield, director of Harper & Brothers publishing house, when she was just 20.

She later took the last name of her second husband, the exiled Polish Prince Stanislas Radziwill, with whom she lived in London, just behind Buckingham Palace. The couple had two children, Anthony and Christina, during what Radziwill later called the happiest time of her life.

Her third marriage was to Herbert Ross, director of iconic films Footloose and Steel Magnolias, and also ended in divorce.

She later spent time as a talk show host and stage producer, although neither careers enjoyed the wider success of her earlier endeavours.

Paying tribute on Saturday, Mathilde Favier, fashion designer at Christian Dior, summed up what many of her friends and admirers felt of Radziwill: “The most elegant and tasteful lady on Earth".