I wish I could find a shareable version of Richard Avedon’s starkly chic portrait of Gloria Vanderbilt wearing Mainbocher for Harper’s Bazaar. Fortunately, Gloria herself posted it on Instagram.<\/p>\n
Vanderbilt died Monday aged 95 from stomach cancer<\/a>. She was born into fame thanks to her father, a wealthy and dissolute great-grandson of 19th-century robber baron<\/a>, who died from the effects of his heavy drinking when Gloria was 18 months old and her mother, also named Gloria, was only 19. Beautiful Gloria senior enjoyed a jet-setting lifestyle, often letting little Gloria’s care fall to the beloved nurse the child called Dodo<\/a>. Her mother’s inattention resulted in a nasty, headline-generating battle for custody when Gloria was 10, brought by her disapproving aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the founder of the Whitney Museum. Newspapers referred to young Gloria “the poor little rich girl.”<\/p>\n