Gloria Vanderbilt

Gloria Vanderbilt, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1958.

Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (born February 20, 1924) is a member of the prominent United States Vanderbilt family. She is an artist, actress, and socialite most noted as a spokeswoman for designer blue jeans.

Early life and heiress status

Vanderbilt is the only child of American railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925) and his second wife, Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan (1904-1965).

She became heiress to a $USD 4 million trust fund upon her father's death when she was just 15 months old. The rights to control this trust fund while Vanderbilt was a minor belonged to her mother. As a result, Vanderbilt became the subject of a custody battle in a famous and scandalous trial in 1934 that placed her mother against the powerful and influential Vanderbilt family. Testimony was heard depicting her mother as an unfit parent, much of which was conjecture and hearsay.

Vanderbilt's mother eventually lost custody to her sister-in-law Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney but litigation continued.

Marriages, relationships and children

Vanderbilt married Hollywood agent Pasquale DiCicco ("Pat" DiCicco) in 1941; they divorced in 1945. Her second marriage, to conductor Leopold Stokowski on April 21, 1945, produced two sons, Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski, born in 1950, and Christopher Stokowski, born in 1955; they divorced in October, 1955. On August 28, 1956, she married director Sidney Lumet; they divorced in August, 1963. She married her fourth husband, author Wyatt Emory Cooper in 1964. They had two sons, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, in 1965, and CNN reporter and anchor Anderson Cooper, born in 1967. Wyatt Cooper died in 1978 during open heart surgery in New York City. Carter Cooper died in 1988 after jumping from the family's 14th floor apartment.

Professional career and later life

Vanderbilt studied art at the Art Students League of New York. She became known for her artwork, giving one-woman shows of oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels. This artwork was adapted and licensed, starting about 1968, by Hallmark (a manufacturer of paper products) and by Bloomcraft (a textile manufacturer), and Vanderbilt began designing specifically for linens, china, glassware and flatware.

During the 1970s, she licensed the use of her name on a line of fashion eyeglasses, perfume and clothing. (Initially, her involvement in clothing consisted of putting her name (in place of the previous brand name, "Lucky Pierre") on a line of blouses produced by the Murjani Corporation). In 1979, Murjani proposed launching a line of designer jeans carrying Vanderbilt's brand name; they were more tight fitting than other jeans of the day, with the heiress's name embossed in script on the back pocket.

Vanderbilt also appeared in a series of television ads promoting her products. Her designer label has flourished, with the Gloria Vanderbilt "swan" logo eventually appearing on dresses and perfume as well.

Author of:
Once upon a Time: A True Story
A Mother's Story, which recounts the story of her son Carter's death
It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir

Subject of:
Trio: Oona Chaplin, Carol Matthau, Gloria Vanderbilt: Portrait of an Intimate Friendship by Aram Saroyan
Little Gloria... Happy at Last by Barbara Goldsmith
That Vanderbilt Woman by Philip Van Rensselaer

Fashion Designers:
* House of Mainbocher

External links

*Gloria Vanderbilt's Many Loves CBS News July 31, 2005.