Jackie Kennedy’s Younger Sister, Socialite Lee Radziwill, Dead at 85

Sisters and socialites Lee Radziwill and Jacqueline Kennedy sit in the back of a car in London on May 15, 1965. (Central Press/Getty Images)

Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s younger sister, socialite and fashionista, Lee Radziwill has passed away.

Radziwill died at the age of 85 from age-related disease, according to Fox News.  She was generally in good health and lived up to her status of a fashionista until her death at her home in New York on Feb. 15.

She was known for her grace and her perfect sense of style, and was entered in Vanity Fair’s International Best Dressed Hall of Fame in 1996.

Radziwill began a career as an actress in the 1960s. She later became a very successful interior designer and, according to Fox News, also worked as a brand ambassador and public relations executive for Giorgio Armani.

Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy. (Reg Burkett/Express/Getty Images)

“She was the height of elegance, a true icon,"Mathilde Favier, Radziwill’s close friend and public relations director for Christian Dior, told WWD.

“[She was] an incredibly attractive woman who always adapted to whatever the circumstance. She was never overdressed or underdressed ... She was incredibly elegant and inspiring, and always ahead of her time because she was a fashion visionary. It’s very sad. It’s the end of an era,” Favier said.

WWD reports that Radziwill stood out not only because of her style but also because of her kindness and humor.

“It’s a natural end of a marvelous life. She had everything a woman can desire … beauty, intelligence, style, fame ... I am sure she had moments of happiness, too,” Italian Fashion designer and the founder of the Valentino SpA brand and company, Valentino Garavani told WWD.

Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy, poses with Caroline Kennedy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on April 23, 2001. (Don Pollard/Metropolitan Museum of Art/Newsmakers)

Radziwill’s had another friend in the fashion industry, Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, who first came to know her in the 1980s.

“She was an extremely elegant woman. When I met her in the early Eighties, I had the impression that she represented a very contemporary irony about American aristocracy, which is almost impossible to define. It is one that combined ease and sophistication, spontaneity and respect for the rules,” Armani said.

“We have collaborated for a long period, choosing together those personalities, who were able to represent the Armani style on the Hollywood stage. She was very intuitive and well-respected. Maybe that was because looking at her it was impossible not to see in her fragments of the American history.”