Gloria Vanderbilt, Heiress, Fashion Icon, Has Died At Age 95

Gloria Vanderbilt, Heiress, Fashion Icon, has died at age 95.

Monday, June 17th 2019, 11:23 am

By: News On 6

Gloria Vanderbilt, the intrepid heiress, artist and romantic who began her extraordinary life as the "poor little rich girl" of the Great Depression, survived family tragedy and multiple marriages and reigned during the 1970s and '80s as a designer jeans pioneer, died Monday at the age of 95. Vanderbilt was the great-great-granddaughter of financier Cornelius Vanderbilt and the mother of Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor and "60 Minutes" contributor who announced her death via a first-person obituary that aired on CNN Monday morning.

Cooper said Vanderbilt died at home with friends and family at her side. She had been suffering from advanced stomach cancer, he noted.

"An extraordinary woman"

"Gloria Vanderbilt was an extraordinary woman, who loved life, and lived it on her own terms," Cooper said in a statement. "She was a painter, a writer, and designer but also a remarkable mother, wife, and friend. She was 95 years old, but ask anyone close to her, and they'd tell you, she was the youngest person they knew, the coolest, and most modern."

Her life was chronicled in sensational headlines from her childhood through four marriages and three divorces. She married for the first time at 17, causing her aunt to disinherit her.

Her husbands included Leopold Stokowski, the celebrated conductor, and Sidney Lumet, the award-winning movie and television director. In 1988, she witnessed the suicide of one of her four sons.

Artist, author, designer

Vanderbilt was a talented painter and collagist who also acted on the stage ("The Time of Your Life" on Broadway) and television ("Playhouse 90," ''Studio One," ''Kraft Theater," ''U.S. Steel Hour"). She was a fabric designer who became an early enthusiast for designer denim.

The dark-haired, tall and ultra-thin Vanderbilt partnered with Mohan Murjani, who introduced a $1 million advertising campaign in 1978 that turned the Gloria Vanderbilt brand with its signature white swan label into a sensation. At its peak in 1980, it was generating over $200 million in sales.

And decades later, famous-name designer jeans -- dressed up or down -- remain a woman's wardrobe staple. Vanderbilt wrote several books, including the 2004 chronicle of her love life: "It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir," which drops such names as Errol Flynn, whom she dated as a teenager; Frank Sinatra, for whom she left Stokowski; Marlon Brando and Howard Hughes.

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