JEANS QUEEN DIES
Famed heir, fashion icon Vanderbilt was 95
Gloria Vanderbilt, the Manhattan-born child heiress and fashion phenom whose embroidered autograph was worn on the back pockets of a generation, died Monday at 95, her son Anderson Cooper said.
The multimillionaire designer first rose to fame as the “poor little rich girl” at the center of a nasty Depressionera custody battle, but she established her own success later in life as an actress, author and the glamorous face of her wildly popular designer denim line coveted for its stitched signature and status-symbol swan logo.
In a touching on-air eulogy, her CNN news anchor son said she learned only recently that she had “very advanced cancer in her stomach, and that it had spread.”
In his broadcast report, Cooper played a video of his mother laughing at one of her own jokes while in the hospital.
“I never knew that we had the same exact giggle. I recorded it, and it makes me giggle every time I watch it,” he said.
“She spent a lot of time alone in her head during her life, but when the end came, she was not alone,” he said. “She was surrounded by beauty, and by family, and by friends. …What an extraordinary life. What an extraordinary mom. And what an incredible woman.”
He said though his mom was well into her 90s, “ask anyone close to her, and they’d tell you, she was the youngest person they knew, the coolest, and most modern.”
Vanderbilt and Cooper cowrote “The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Loss and Love,” a 2016 best seller about their relationship and tumultuous family history, including the 1988 suicide of Vanderbilt’s 23-yearold son, Carter Cooper, which she witnessed at her East Side penthouse.
Born in Manhattan on Feb. 20, 1924, Vanderbilt was the great-great-granddaughter of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. While still a toddler, she and her half-sister inherited their father’s $5 million fortune when he died from cirrhosis. She spent her early years mostly in Paris as her young, jet-setting mother bounced around Europe and left the child largely in the care of a beloved nanny.
Vanderbilt’s paternal aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the sculptor and wealthy philanthropist who founded the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, didn’t approved of the mother’s parenting style and fought for custody.
The court battle generated national tabloid headlines for weeks in 1934 with its sensationalized tales of superrich self-indulgence. Vanderbilt ended up in her aunt’s care until she turned 17 and dropped out of school to join her mom in California.
A beauty known for her alabaster skin and signature brunette bob, Vanderbilt became a Hollywood socialite who dated Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Howard Hughes.
She met her first husband, Pat DiCicco, a reported associate of the mob boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano, when she was only 17. He was physically abusive, and they divorced four years later, in 1945.
She was in her early 20s when she met 63-year-old orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski and married him three weeks later.
Her third husband was the celebrated director and screenwriter Sidney Lumet, but she said her fourth marriage to Cooper’s author dad, Wyatt Cooper, was her happiest. It lasted from 1963 until she became a widow in 1978.
Vanderbilt had plenty of famous friends during her long life, including fellow designer Diane von Fürstenberg and the writer Truman Capote, who reportedly used her as inspiration for the Holly Golightly character in his 1958 novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“I’ve had many, many loves,” Vanderbilt told The Associated Press in 2004. “I always feel that something wonderful is going to happen. And it always does.”