Gloria Vanderbilt, New York Socialite And Designer, Dies At 95

NEW YORK — The fashion designer and New York socialite Gloria Vanderbilt has died, her son, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, announced Monday morning. She was 95.

Vanderbilt's death followed her diagnosis with advanced stomach cancer earlier this month, Cooper said. She was surrounded by family and friends when she died, he said.

"Gloria Vanderbilt died as she lived — on her own terms," Cooper said in a video tribute to his mother. "I know she hoped for a little more time, a few days or weeks, at least. There were paintings she wanted to make, more books she wanted to read, more dreams to dream. But she was ready. She was ready to go."

Vanderbilt was born in Manhattan in 1924 to Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, an heir to part of the family's railroad fortune, and Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt. She was forced into the public spotlight at a young age during a custody battle between her mother and her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, that was dubbed the "trial of the century."

Whitney won the court fight and young Gloria lived in her mansion in Old Westbury, Long Island. She first got married at 17 to Pasquale DiCicco, a Hollywood agent who Vanderbilt later said was abusive. They divorced four years later, in 1945.

Vanderbilt went on to a career that included stints as an actress, artist, model and fashion designer, launching a signature brand of tight-fitting jeans. The jeans, bearing her signature swan logo, sold by the millions under her label, GV Ltd., according to CNN.

"It was pretty hard to miss the jeans she helped create, but that was her public face, the one she learned to hide behind as a child," Cooper said. "Her private self, her real self, that was more fascinating and more lovely than anything she showed the public."

She was married four times, most recently to Cooper's father, the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper. She had two sons with her second husband, the conductor Leopold Stokowski.