This article originally appeared in the October 2000 issue of ELLE DECOR. For more stories from our archive, subscribe to ELLE DECOR All Access.
In the fall of 1939, Harper’s Bazaar predicted, with little fear of contradiction, that a certain 15-year-old then living in Old Westbury, Long Island, was “inevitably the next glamour girl.” Her name was Gloria Vanderbilt, and unlike most girls her age, she was already beautiful and already famous.
More typically of adolescents, Vanderbilt was not at all sure of herself. She scarcely recognized the self-contained, sensual creature in the Louise Dahl-Wolfe photograph. “Who was she?” she would write years later. “It really has nothing to do with me at all.” Yet the caption writer at Harper’s Bazaar had insisted. “Her tastes are definite,” citing the girl’s interest “in things Egyptian,” including an Egyptian room of Vanderbilt’s own design.
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