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Anonymous ID: ff3672 Aug. 15, 2018, 8:24 p.m. No.2621957   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2011 >>2133

https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/world-gloria-vanderbilt-sheds-light-icon-life-loves-designs-article-1.1044212#

 

More than just a natural beauty and New York heiress, Gloria Vanderbilt is an artist, actress, fashion icon, design goddess and survivor. That's the message in author and New York magazine design editor Wendy Goodman's intriguing new book, "The World of Gloria Vanderbilt."

 

"She is a modern-day siren, a seductress, a woman who knows exactly what she wants," says Goodman, who spent four years on the book, working intimately with Vanderbilt, a longtime family friend.

 

 

"Her story is an American story as much as anything else. She was never that poor little rich girl . Gloria was determined to make her own life that had nothing to do with money. Like most true artists, her life was full of complexities, sadness and success, but through it all, she perseveres."

 

Like Vanderbilt's sense of fashion and design, the book is a visual explosion, portraying a life surrounded by beauty. It's more than a photographic memoir or coffee-table book. "The World of Gloria Vanderbilt" is a divine lesson in life, love and decor.

 

 

"What astonished me about Gloria was her capacity to make magical environments at every phase of her life," says Goodman. "Her taste was and is original just to her. She has a real conviction and was her own creative muse, her own brand. She understands who and what she is, and never looked for approval from anyone else. Every house she lived in, she designed herself, and all were photographed by House & Garden or Vogue."

 

Goodman, one of New York City's most accomplished design writers, learned from her time with Vanderbilt, filled with intimate stories and lessons in aesthetics.

 

"Design is the most personal thing," she says. "It's about confidence in what you're doing, and never doing something you think you should. Everything Gloria did she did because she honestly loved it. She constantly created beauty and fantasy in her imagination. If anyone else had done these rooms, they would have been a disaster."

 

Goodman was a little girl when she first laid eyes on Vanderbilt.

 

"The first time I remember seeing Gloria Vanderbilt was a Christmas party," Goodman writes in the introduction. "I must have been about 9 years old. She had just taken off her coat and was arranging her hair in the mirror. …She was wearing a gray cashmere dress with bright red stockings and flat shoes, no jewelry. I was mesmerized. It wasn't just that she was so beautiful; she seemed linked to a world of untamed glamour that made her totally mysterious."

 

 

 

 

That mystery may have come from a life filled with turmoil and joy. Her father died when she was 19 months old. Her mother, 19 at Gloria's birth, lost Gloria in a traumatic custody case with her father's sister. She had a career as an actress after studying art at the Arts Student League on 57th St. Her gallery shows were so celebrated, Johnny Carson did an hour -long show on her work in 1968 that launched Vanderbilt into a career creating fabrics, stemware, bedding and paper products. Of course, her denim collection, with a swan logo, became the first pair of designer jeans ever produced.

Anonymous ID: ff3672 Aug. 15, 2018, 8:28 p.m. No.2622011   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>2621957

cont

 

"It begins through and through with Gloria as an artist," says Goodman. "A true artist of life who now, at 86 years old, is as curious and ageless as a little girl. She has never looked back."

 

"The World of Gloria Vanderbilt" from Abrams retails for $40 and is available wherever books are sold. Gloria's son, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, wrote the foreword to the book, which was introduced at a star-studded party thrown in November at Ralph Lauren's new flagship store on 72nd St. and Madison Ave.

 

TEN THINGS ABOUT GLORIA

 

  1. In 1934, at 10 years old, Gloria was thrust into a nationally publicized custody case where her aunt and mother fought bitterly for her care. To escape the chaos, Vanderbilt (below with her nanny and mother) imagined a diamond as hard as a rock inside herself that no one but Gloria could ever touch.

 

  1. The first fashion photograph of Gloria appeared in a major magazine when she was 15. Diana Vreeland, then editor of Harper's Bazaar, met Gloria at her aunt's Old Westbury home, where Gloria had decorated a small room with an Egyptian theme. Vreeland, like others, was totally captivated by Gloria.

 

  1. So was Howard Hughes, who wanted to marry her when she was 17. They went flying together. Gloria's Aunt Gertrude, her legal guardian who founded the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1954, quashed the idea, speaking to Hughes directly. No one knows what she said.

 

  1. Gloria was married four times, the first time at 17. The second time to the composer Leopold Stokowski, who was 41 years her senior. They had two sons together. The third time to director Sidney Lumet, who made "Serpico" and "Network." The last time to writer Wyatt Cooper, with whom she also had two sons, one of whom is CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. The other son, Carter, died tragically at age 23 at 10 Gracie Square. He fell from the terrace of the family's penthouse, in what is considered a suicide. Gloria wrote about it candidly her book, "A Mother's Story."

 

  1. She named some of her houses. A Southhampton estate was titled Summertime. A stone cottage in Connecticut on the Mianus River was called Faraway. In one photo that appeared in Vogue, she's standing on a rock in a stream under a parasol with the stone house behind her. It's storybook pretty.

 

  1. Always in tune with the times, Gloria took a doctor-monitored LSD trip.

 

  1. Gloria's great-great- grandfather was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Staten Island native ran the first ferry to Manhattan before starting in the railroad business. He also began building Grand Central Depot.

 

  1. A disciplined hard worker, Gloria tirelessly promoted her line of jeans.

 

  1. She once dated Frank Sinatra, was labeled a "Swan" by one-time friend Truman Capote and has been shot by the leading photographers of their times: Richard Avedon, Edgar de Evia and Annie Leibovitz.

 

  1. When she was a little girl, she thought she was overweight. Today, her artwork includes dream boxes, glass cubes measuring 72 feet on all sides, filled with objects like oversize baby dolls, broken mannequins wearing black chiffon and glass red hearts. Her spirit, as you can imagine, remains forever young. Author Goodman says she's one of the kindest, most gracious people she's ever met.