Inside the remarkable life of artist and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, who has died aged 95

Gloria Vanderbilt, American fashion designer, artist, author and heiress, died on Monday 17 June 2019, aged 95. Vanderbilt had cancer. She is survived by her sons, CNN anchor and journalist Anderson Cooper—who confirmed her death, saying she was the “coolest and most modern” person he knew—Leopold Stokowski and Christopher Stokowski. 

Throughout her life, Vanderbilt operated at the nexus of American society—first as an heiress who was the subject of a fraught and highly-publicised custody battle, and later through her myriad career ventures, social life and four marriages.

A regular on the international best-dressed list, in 1968 LIFE magazine called her “an up-to-date and very feminine version of the many-faceted Renaissance man” on account of her work as a “poet, actress, literary critic and artist”. But it was in the late 1970s, with the launch of her eponymous denim line in collaboration with Murjani, that Vanderbilt experienced her greatest financial and critical success. Launched in 1977, it generated $300 million in sales within three years, outselling Calvin Klein in 1979 by 20 per cent.

“She’s tried to do many, many things for many, many years,” reflected her friend Diane von Furstenberg in 1979. “The thing that you least associated her with—jeans—worked.” This was in part a marketing triumph, with sales supported by what The New York Times called “the most extensive television campaign ever waged by an apparel company and a blitzkrieg of print advertising and promotional tours”.

In later life, she continued to exhibit as an artist and wrote several books, including an erotic novel released in 2009, which The New York Times argued “may be the steamiest book ever written by an octogenarian”.

Above: Baby Gloria Vanderbilt photographed on the lawn of the summer home of the Vanderbilts in 1925.

Born in 1924, Vanderbilt made headlines from birth. The great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who by the time of his death in 1877 had amassed an enormous $100 million fortune, Vanderbilt’s father passed away when she was an infant, thus leaving her in the care of her mother.

It was a difficult childhood, with her mother largely absent and embroiled in a frenetic European social life with her twin sister Thelma, who was the mistress of the future King Edward VIII. “She was always off, exquisitely dressed, going down the hallway with a man,” Vanderbilt later observed. Her mother’s behaviour eventually resulted in a very public custody battle instigated by her paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who founded the New York museum bearing her last name.

Due to the salacious details of the case, Vanderbilt became a subject of national fascination, termed a “poor little rich girl” by the press. “I just never read anything about myself,” she later said in 1982. “I started that as a child because of the kind of publicity I had. And, not reading these things, well, that has enabled me to survive.”

It was the aunt who eventually won, with Vanderbilt dispatched to live on her Long Island estate and only see her mother at weekends. The challenging nature of this arrangement meant that at 17 she fell into marriage with agent and rumoured mobster Pat DiCicco after an affair with his boss, Howard Hughes. “What can one say about a first marriage, except that it’s wonderful?” she told reporters at the time—though her comment about it being her first was prophetic. Vanderbilt later called the union a “desperate measure” adding that DiCicco was violent towards her.

Above: Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt with their bay daughter
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt in 1925.

After four years, she divorced DiCicco in 1945 when, aged 21, she was finally able to access her trust fund. In the same year she remarried, this time to conductor Leopold Stokowski, who was 40 years her senior. The union lasted 10 years and produced two sons. It was Stokowski who reportedly encouraged her artistic pursuits and she went on to study at The Art Students League of New York, staging her first solo exhibition in 1952. In 1968, her designs were licensed by Hallmark to appear on their cards and stationery. In 1953 she turned to acting, receiving training from Sanford Meisner and appearing on Broadway in 1955, and on television thereafter. In 1955, she also published a collection of Love Poems and divorced Stokowski, briefly dating Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando before marrying director Sidney Lumet. The two were married for seven years before divorcing in 1963, when she married writer Wyatt Emory Cooper.

It was this final union in which she was most happy and the two remained married until Cooper’s death in 1978. The marriage also produced two sons, with the elder, Carter, tragically committing suicide at 23 in front of his mother, by jumping off the terrace of her 14th floor apartment. She remained close with her younger son, Anderson, until her death.

Click Here: online rugby store malaysiaAbove: Gloria Vanderbilt in Long Island with her aunt Gertrude
Vanderbilt in 1934.

Throughout her life and marriages, Vanderbilt captivated the attention of the fashion press. “She has that Bacchanalian look the Vanderbilts all had,” said Diana Vreeland, who first featured her in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar in 1939 aged 15. She later appeared in Vogue, photographed by Richard Avedon, with whom she built a particularly strong relationship. “The reflection Dick gave back to me made me believe in myself,” she later said. “The shoots marked the pivotal moment when I knew then at least I could trust myself and that I was free. I was free and unafraid. I fought Stakowski for custody, and Sidney told me, Gloria you won where your mother failed.”

In 1968, LIFE magazine said she had “spearheaded and developed a style of dressing which she calls ‘putting bits and pieces together’”, instead of wearing one head-to-toe look. Her feats as a decorator – —she said she was allergic to professionals—were captured by Horst P Horst for Vogue, and her status as a girl-about-town was cemented by a close relationship with Truman Capote, who was rumoured to have used Vanderbilt as inspiration for the character of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Though the two later fell out, he aptly summed up her appeal: “Gloria’s attraction was that she had the beauty of an actress with the pedigree of an heiress and the attitude of an artist.”

Above: Gloria Vanderbilt in 1937.

Not all her business ventures were successful: a 1976 ready-to-wear collection failed to take off, while the decline of her jean business in the 1980s coincided with a money troubles brought on by the fraudulent management of her estate by her lawyer and psychiatrist. Vanderbilt successfully sued the pair, but she never received the money she was owed, and as a New York Magazine article noted, “She spent it as fast as she could make it.” Her son Anderson Cooper later said, “My mom is a survivor, but has none of the toughness that term often implies. She has strength, great stores of it, but she has refused to develop a layer of thick skin to protect herself.”

Confirming the news of her passing, Cooper concluded, “Love is what she believed in more than anything. Gloria Vanderbilt died as she lived: on her own terms.”

Above: Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney on horseback in 1937.

Gloria Vanderbilt upon her return from Cuba in 1939.

Gloria Vanderbilt (right) and her mother Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt in Los Angeles in 1939.

Pasquale DiCicco and Gloria Vanderbilt on their wedding day in 1941.

Gloria Vanderbilt circa 1950.

Gloria Vanderbilt discusses her poetry on the CBS Radio program ‘The Music Room’ in the early 1950s.

Gloria Vanderbilt in 1954.

Gloria Vanderbilt Stokowski in costume for Molnar’s play ‘The Swan’ in 1954.

Gloria Vanderbilt and Frank Sinatra on New Year’s Eve in 1954-55.

Frank Sinatra and Gloria Vanderbilt.

Sidney Kingsley kisses the cheek of Gloria Vanderbilt as Sidney Lumet and Carol Grace stand by during Lumet and Vanderbilt’s 1956 wedding.

Gloria Vanderbilt walks with her attorneys on the way to a custody hearing with her former husband, Leopold Stokowski, in 1959.

Gloria Vanderbilt goes for a swim circa 1960.

Gloria Vanderbilt having a day of beauty—manicure, pedicure and lunch—at the House of Revlon in NYC in 1961. Photographed by Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast.

Portrait of Gloria Vanderbilt as she poses in a clearing and smokes a cigarette in a holder, May 1962.

Sidney Lumet and his wife Gloria Vanderbilt at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.

Gloria Vanderbilt photographed at home by Horst P. Horst for Vogue, 1966.

Wyatt Emory Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt sit with their sons, Carter and Anderson Cooper, in their home in Southampton in 1972.

Gloria Vanderbilt in her studio with pantings on the walls and floor. Photographed by Horst P. Horst for Vogue, 1975.

Gloria Vanderbilt and her two sons, Carter and Anderson Cooper, walk along a sidewalk in New York, March 1976.

Gloria Vanderbilt sitting amidst a group of models bending over to accent the rear of her designer jeans in 1978.

Gloria Vanderbilt at the 1979 Met Gala in New York.

Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt in 2009.