Gloria

I took great interest in the death of Gloria Vanderbilt this week.  She is one of a four famous women, all born in the 1920’s that I admire.  Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Gloria round out the stylish quartet.  Love them or not, they were notable for their grace, elegance, and most importantly, living lives on their very own terms.

I first became familiar with Gloria Vanderbilt when I saw pictures of her in Vogue and Harper’s Bazzar in the 70’s. I thought she was lovely.  Later, I happened upon some of her freelance writing in Vanity Fair and Elle.  She was a good writer and engaging too.  Later, I knew her from her much-celebrated blue jeans which I never owned – back pockets with outside stitching never appealed to me.  But I did buy her perfume once.  It was an inexpensive drugstore brand and I thought it was fresh-smelling and light for a summer of disco dancing.

My mother knows alot about Gloria Vanderbilt as she remembers hearing about the custody battle involving her mother and her wealthy aunt.  “Little Girl Lost” and “Poor Little Rich Girl” were some of the headlines from that time.  But Gloria was so much more than all that.  (Although reading her obituary yesterday in the New York Times, I was dumbstruck at the monthly stipend from Gloria’s trust fund that her mother siphoned off for her care – $5,000 per month.  That’s approximately $57,000 in today’s money – a shocking sum for a month).

Gloria made it pretty clear that all the riches bestowed upon her never brought her much happiness.  However, she was happy about the money she earned from her clothing line (the jeans included) and her perfume.  That money meant something because she earned it with her own design concepts and the desire to find good-fitting jeans for herself.  And that segways me into the reasons why I applaud her.

As a writer, I struggle between telling my secrets and keeping my heart locked from view.  I know my stories would gain more attention, if I gave it to you straight.  But writing that way takes a lot out of a person and I’m not so sure, me being decidedly un-famous, you really want a regular diet of that.  Gloria, on the otherhand, gave her readers a choice, asking so eloquently and poignantly at the opening of one of her autobiographies, “Shall I start with scandal, or broken dreams?  With great love, or shattering loss”?  I think her readers may have wanted scandal and loss at first, but it was all the other things she did with her life that made her so wonderful and so worthy of my attention here.  She did end up baring all in her books.

Her losses were great and included but not limited to, an abusive husband, death of a son, financial troubles.  Yet, Gloria always managed to rise from the ashes.  When she had to sell  her beloved townhome and summer house to pay the IRS, she bloomed where she was next planted.  Her ghosts haunted her, but reinvention was her mantra and her lifelong friend and she evolved repeatedly, following her creative heart into designing, modeling, writing, and painting.  I don’t know if giving up was ever a part of her lexicon.  And even though her bank acount was much larger than mine will ever be, there are lessons here for all women.

And so I say, Godspeed Gloria Vanderbilt, another amazing woman…