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’s 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…