Gloria Vanderbilt passes away at 95
WASHINGTON: Gloria Vanderbilt, the “poor litle rich girl” who lived a life at the highest levels of fashion, society and wealth as an heir to one of the greatest family fortunes in US history, died on Monday at the age of 95, her son CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper said.
Vanderbilt became a fashion icon in the 1970s with an eponymous line of tight-fiting blue jeans that bore her signature and trademark swan logo. They were a must-have for any woman with aspirations to style.
Vanderbilt wrote that as a girl she had considered becoming a nun, which would have been an incredible loss to the chroniclers of high society, celebrity and tumult. Instead of a nunnery, she went on to a life that could have provided storylines for dozens of soap operas, romance novels, Broadway musicals and tear-jerker movies.
Vanderbilt was born into wealth on Feb. 20, 1924, in New York City. She was the great-greatgranddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the 19th century railroad and shipping magnate who amassed one of the greatest fortunes of the time.
She was not yet 2 years old when her father, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, died and she spent many of the following years living in Europe with her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, on her trust fund, which was estimated at $2.5 million — the equivalent of at least $33 million today.
Gloria’s aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who founded the Whitney Museum of American Art, said Gloria’s mother was misusing the trust fund on a free-wheeling lifestyle that included a female lover, and went to court. Whitney won custody of the child in an acrimonious, sensationalized case that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
The custody batle featured high-society character witnesses for both sides and testimony so sensitive that courtroom spectators were barred at times. The public closely followed the fate of “Litle Gloria,” who was protected at the time by 12 bodyguards.
Whitney eventually won custody of Gloria with one judge reproaching the girl’s mother for living a lifestyle that was “calculated to destroy her health and neglectful of her moral, spiritual and mental education.” Vanderbilt said being taken from her mother started her on a lifelong quest for love and approval. This led her to marry a 32-year-old Hollywood agent, Pat Dicicco, when she was only 17. They divorced in 1945, when at the age of 21, Vanderbilt married conductor Leopold Stokowski, who was 63.