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Spoilers for Season 2, Episode 6. In “Hats, Gloves and Effete Homosexuals,” the old signals of New York status are disappearing just as Truman Capote tries to reinvent himself and his protégé Kate. The episode’s fourteen reveals are an editorial breakdown of its major turns, not an official numbered list.
Episode 6 details
Rotten Tomatoes lists “Hats, Gloves and Effete Homosexuals” as the sixth episode of Season 2, directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Jon Robin Baitz. It was released February 28, 2024. FX’s “Episode 6: Ladies Lunch” is the title of a video extra, not the episode itself. Rotten Tomatoes episode listing · FX video extra
14 biggest reveals in “Hats, Gloves and Effete Homosexuals”
- The story moves into 1978. The change in year places Capote and the Swans in a later chapter of their unraveling relationships.
- Capote’s familiar hat shop is closing. The loss of a place tied to his routines makes the passing of an era tangible.
- The old rituals are losing their footing. The shop’s closure is more than an inconvenience: the social world Capote knows is changing around him.
- Babe’s illness remains close to the surface. Capote asks after her, while her treatment shapes the way she and C.Z. approach the public world.
- Capote tries to make Kate a model. He steers his protégé toward a fashion career and treats her image as something he can shape.
- He styles Kate to resemble an earlier Babe. The look reflects Capote’s attachment to a past ideal rather than the moment Kate is entering.
- Lee Radziwill and Slim Keith stay cool toward him. At La Côte Basque, Capote brings Kate into their orbit, but his presence does not restore the old warmth.
- Richard Avedon rejects Capote’s styling. At the shoot, the photographer redirects Kate toward a more contemporary look.
- Avedon points Capote back to his book. The encounter makes the contrast plain: Capote is preoccupied with appearances while his writing remains stalled.
- Studio 54 offers a brief performance of youth. Capote and C.Z. go dancing, but the outing and its publicity leave C.Z. embarrassed rather than reinvigorated.
- Babe and C.Z. find that gloves have disappeared from the department store. Babe wants gloves to cover the visible effects of treatment, but there is no longer a glove department. Like the closing hat shop, the absence marks a changing culture.
- Capote becomes involved with Rick in Palm Springs. Rick is a younger handyman, and Capote brings him into his New York circle, where he does not fit easily with the Swans.
- The Vidal dispute adds to Capote’s isolation. The lawsuit runs alongside the personal conflicts, and Lee refuses to intervene. The episode dramatizes the dispute rather than serving as a legal record.
- Rick leaves, and Capote turns back to writing. The relationship ends; the loss helps bring Capote face to face with his stalled life and the work he has been avoiding.
Why the hats and gloves matter
The closing hat shop and vanished glove department give the episode a visual way to show social change. These are not simply accessories: they are parts of a style and set of rituals through which the Swans have understood themselves. Babe’s search for gloves is especially personal, because she wants to conceal the effects of treatment. The episode connects the fading of a public culture with the private realities of aging and illness.
Kate, Avedon and Capote’s stalled work
Capote’s effort to dress Kate in an image modeled on Babe reveals how much he is trying to reproduce a world that has already begun to recede. Avedon’s intervention changes the shoot’s direction and exposes the gap between Capote’s nostalgia and contemporary fashion. His urging that Capote return to his book gives the episode’s modeling plot a second purpose: it redirects attention from the image Capote is curating to the writing he has left unfinished.
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How the episode connects to the real history
Feud: Capote vs. The Swans is an eight-episode limited series based on Laurence Leamer’s Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. Its wider historical backdrop is Capote’s 1975 Esquire story “La Côte Basque 1965,” an excerpt from his unfinished novel Answered Prayers. TIME reports that the thinly veiled story exposed confidences of people close to him and prompted a backlash that shut him out of elite social circles. FX series description · Laurence Leamer’s book · TIME on the story’s fallout
The Vidal lawsuit also has a historical basis, but individual scenes and exchanges are dramatized. Vanity Fair’s episode explainer connects the dispute to a salacious story Capote told about Gore Vidal at a dinner with the Kennedys, and notes Lee’s refusal to help him. Vanity Fair’s episode explainer
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