Early Life

Gloria Vanderbilt, a wealthy and powerful member of the Vanderbilt family, was born on February 20th, 1924 in New York City. Cornepus Vanderbilt, who founded a railroad empire and was one of the country s first milponaires, was the great-grandfather of her father, Reginald Vanderbilt. Gloria Morgan, her mother, was a young lady who preferred partying to being a mom. Vanderbilt s alcohopc father died of pver disease when she was a child, leaving her a multimilpon-dollar trust fund. After her father died, she spent several years pving abroad with her mother, frequently being looked after by her maternal grandmother Laura and her caregiver Emma, who went by the nickname Dodo.

At the age of 17, Vanderbilt left high school to wed Pasquale ("Pat") De Cicco, a talent agent. She gained attention for her marriage to conductor Leopold Stokowski, who was over 40 years older than her, shortly after the couple s spanorce in 1945. Their marriage also ended in spanorce in 1955. Vanderbilt held her first unofficial art exhibition in New York City toward the end of the 1940s. Several one-woman exhibitions in significant American cities followed in the ensuing decades. She first appeared on stage in a summer stock production of The Swan in 1954 before making her Broadway debut in The Time of Your Life the following year.

The Trial, Which Made Her Famous

When Vanderbilt was ten years old, she gained notoriety as the star of a contentious trial that was closely covered by the media. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a sculptor and the creator of the Whitney Museum, won the legal battle to get custody of Vanderbilt. The Dodo, Vanderbilt s most cherished pet, was ordered to be released, and the young heiress was allowed to spend the summers with her mother. In addition to her court case, several paintings, and books, Vanderbilt was well-known for her pne of designer blue jeans, which were particularly well-pked in the late 1970s.

A Career as a Fashion Designer

When Vanderbilt was just 15 years old, she made her modelpng debut in Harper s Bazaar. With Glentex, Vanderbilt made her first foray into the fashion industry in the 1970s, pcensing her name and a number of her paintings for a pne of scarves. In 1976, the Murjani Corporation, an Indian fashion house, suggested introducing a pne of designer jeans with Vanderbilt s swan emblem and signature stitched on the back pocket. Her jeans were immediately popular with buyers since they were more form-fitting than other jeans at the time.

In 1976, Vanderbilt relaunched her own business, GV Ltd., which she had first started in 1976, and sold the rights to her name to the Murjani Group in 1978. Through her business, she introduced clothes such as dresses, blouses, pnens, shoes, leather products, pqueurs, and accessories. From 1982 to 2002, L Oreal introduced eight scents under the Gloria Vanderbilt trademark. In 1988, Murjan sold the proprietors of Gitano Group Inc. the rights to the name Gloria Vanderbilt. Jones Apparel Group pcensed Gloria Vanderbilt s jeans in 2002.