Carole Radziwill is not exactly the sentimental type. “I don’t hoard things and I don’t cling to memories,” says the best-selling author and Real Housewives of New York star. “Everything I need to know I’ve written about, is in my head, or has been captured on camera.” At her two-bedroom SoHo apartment, there is only one picture of her late husband, Anthony Radziwill, and only one overt reference to the Bravo show—a bronze apple that nods to the RHONY opening credits. Her extensive childhood collection of Swarovski animals has been pared down to just a few keepsakes, reminders of her humble all-American upbringing in Suffern, New York. “The first thing I bought when I was 14 and started working was a crystal bear,” she recalls. “I thought it was so glamorous and sparkly.” Even her preferred pet-naming convention offers a study in economy. “They’re all my babies,” she says of her dog, Baby, and two cats, Baby Blue and Baby Bell.
Over the years, special attention has been paid to one item of furniture: the vintage sofa that once belonged to her mother-in-law, tastemaker and sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill. Custom-made in the late 1960s, with tiger-stripe upholstery of Brunschwig & Fils silk velvet, the sofa has appeared in the pages of Vogue and Elle Decor, traveling from her mother-in-law's Park Avenue penthouse to Anthony’s bachelor pad, which he and Carole shared before moving into their own Park Avenue apartment. When Carole relocated downtown to SoHo after Anthony’s death, the sofa came too—ultimately serving as a recurring character of sorts on RHONY, the status of its exterior woven into the show’s plotlines at times. “I’ve had it in my life for 27 years,” she reflects. “Not only is it a great couch—the most gorgeous, the most comfortable—it has a lot of memories soaked into it.” But as for sentimental? “Well, I don’t so much feel sentimental for the couch as responsible for it,” she shrugs. “It’s a piece of history."
Time, of course, is no friend to fabric. A decade ago, when the original upholstery began to show serious signs of wear, Carole performed emergency sofa surgery, salvaging the backs of the cushions and the couch’s untouched bottom. “That lasted a good ten more years, but eventually it became painfully obvious that I had to re-cover the whole thing.”
With the help of interior decorator John Bossard, whom she met at a party in Aspen, Colorado, Carole sifted through the hundreds of fabric samples she had gathered. She finally settled on a Lee Jofa velvet in muted French blue. “I didn’t want to do something super glam that would compete with the tiger,” she says. Adds Bossard, “We had to totally rebuild the sofa, taking out the filling and reconstructing its original form.”
They didn’t stop there. “That was the beginning of what snowballed into a total apartment makeover,” recalls Carole, who collaborated with Bossard to replace the living room’s existing gold-and-brown palette with an updated scheme of silvers and blues. Her other sofa—this one curved—received its own fabric face-lift, as did a pair of Dunbar club chairs. Walls were refinished or repainted, and new pieces were mixed with old ones Radziwill felt were worth keeping during the overhaul, including twin Brutalist table lamps, a shagreen-top console, and a button-tufted banquette that Carole modeled after the booths inside New York nightclub Bungalow 8.
"I’m the girl who is going to go home, shut her door, and be in solitude, surrounded by beautiful things"
Upstairs, meanwhile, the small second bedroom, which Carole had previously used as a multipurpose space (part office, part closet, part glam room), was transformed into the dressing den of her dreams, with meticulously organized shelving, a bespoke wall covering, and perfectly separated hangers. That created a need to move her vanity to her master bedroom, which in turn demanded its own update. “I decided to go for something different, something girly,” she says. Gray Ultrasuede walls now serve as a sumptuous backdrop to an antique-mirrored dressing table and a chest of drawers with floral mosaic fronts. Ceramic petals by artisan Bradley Sabin flower above the headboard. “I wanted some element that would draw your eye up, but not a mirror,” Carole says with a wink. “I’m weird, but I’m not that weird.”
Bossard likens the space to a French bordello, a comparison that Carole readily embraces. “One can only hope!” she laughs. “If you build it they will come.” The room is indeed a jewel box of sorts, a place for Carole to do her makeup and binge-watch television. Ensconced, she could be forgiven for losing track of time and running late for dinner—a regular criticism from her friend and RHONY costar Bethenny Frankel. “There are things I’m never late for,” says Carole, amused by the suggestion that her tardiness on the show could amount to an avoidance tactic. “I’m not late for the theater; I’m not late for the movies; I’m not late if my single girlfriend is at a bar somewhere. But if I’m on vacation in Mexico with a bunch of cackling hens, then I’m going to be late for dinner—count on it.”
Being on RHONY, she admits, has brought out her inner homebody when she’s not onscreen. “I had this idea that I was going to have dinner parties, but you know what, I’m not that girl. I don’t love having a lot of people over,” she reflects. “I’m the girl who is going to go home, shut her door, and be in solitude, surrounded by beautiful things.”
If having to host the entire cast and crew while filming has been a struggle, Carole maintains her sense of humor. “I have always approached Housewives as a comedy,” she notes. “In the past, at times, it felt like everyone else was on a drama. This season, though, was genuine comedy—and viewers responded. Given all the darkness in our culture right now, people just want to laugh. Luann falling into the bushes gave me life.”
