Who

Lydia Hearst is an heiress, social fixture, and occasional model.

Backstory

The great-granddaughter of media titan William Randolph Hearst, Lydia is the daughter of infamous kidnappee Patty Hearst and Bernard Shaw, her mom's former bodyguard. Lydia was raised in suburban Connecticut and attended Sacred Heart University in Fairfield before beginning a career as a model during her freshman year. By 2004, the 5' 7", size 2 Hearst had scored her first magazine cover (Vogue Italia) and she went on to book campaigns for Prada and Louis Vuitton. In 2005 she decamped to the city to pursue modeling full-time, and she's since appeared in ads and walked the runway for Bottega Veneta, M.A.C., Clinique, and Heatherette. (She's become something of a muse to Heatherette designers Richie Rich and Traver Rains.) But she also seems to harbor design aspirations: In 2007, she teamed up with Rich and Rains to design a purse for Puma, and she's now at work on a line of fitness clothes for the sportswear brand. Hearst, who inexplicably says she envisions herself as "a Hemingway type," also pens a regular column in the Post's Page Six Magazine about her charmed life.

Pet cause

Hearst isn't wholly consumed with her jet-setting lifestyle: In 2007 she co-founded a charity called Designers for Darfur, a cause about which she's very passionate (that is, whenever reporters and photographers are around). In May 2007, she told a reporter that she regularly packs meals in a soup kitchen and rarely goes out to parties. The story was accompanied by a shot of her at a party at Cipriani the prior night.

Family ties

Lydia's older sister is Gillian Hearst Simonds. Her first cousin is fellow party girl Amanda Hearst. Anne Hearst is her aunt; Jay McInerney is her new uncle. Veronica Hearst—the mother of Fabiola Beracasa—is her step-grandmother.

Personal

Hearst gets around. She dated fellow publishing heir Oliver Hammond for a spell before taking up with actor Justin Bartha. In 2007 she attached her self to professional idiot Cisco Adler, with whom she got matching skeleton key tattoos. Most recently, she's been linked Matt Rains, brother of Heatherette designer Traver. Lydia purchased a two-bedroom condo on West 57th Street for $1.49 million during the fall of 2007. Her sister Gillian and her husband also have a apartment in the building.

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