Gloria Guinness


Gloria Guinness was a Mexican socialite and fashion icon, as well as a contributing editor to Harper's Bazaar from 1963 to 1971, considered to be one of the most elegant women of all time.

Fake origins

For unknown reasons, Guinness frequently lied about her origins, claiming she was from Veracruz, that her father was a revolutionary killed in action and saying that her mother was either a laundry maid or a seamstress.
In any case, while everyone in her social circle tried to "play it up", Gloria had more fun "playing it down", and as such, transmitted a light and unpretentious attitude that made people easily attracted to her and still be considered "the most elegant woman in the world", according to Eleanor Lambert.

True origins

It is only from documentary evidence that it has been possible to establish that Gloria Rubio y Alatorre was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. She was the daughter of José Rafael Rubio y Torres, a successful journalist who supported Francisco I. Madero and died in exile in the United States, and his aristocratic wife doña Maria Luisa Dolores de Alatorre y Diaz-Ocampo., who belonged to a wealthy landowning family from Jalisco, and a cousin of Alfonso Reyes. María Luisa's brothers in law included don Gaspar Rubio de Tejada y Benavente, a nephew of Ramón de Errazu y Rubio de Tejada, and don Jesús Colón de Larreátegui y Vallarta, a descendant of Christopher Columbus, through his eldest son, the 1st Duke of Veragua. She had two elder siblings: Rafael and Maria Luisa.
Gloria's childhood was mainly spent hopping around the haciendas of her mother's wealthy relatives, such as the Villaseñor-Jasso and Sánchez de Aldana families, with whom they grew up, until the Mexican Revolution entered Jalisco and their lands were lost.

Career

Guinness wrote frequently for Harper's Bazaar. She famously asserted, in the magazine's July 1963 issue, that "Elegance is in the brain as well as the body and in the soul. Jesus Christ is the only example we have of any one human having possessed all three at the same time."

Fashion

Voted "Best Dressed Woman In the World" by Time Magazine in 1962, second only to Jackie Kennedy
Guinness was dressed by various top-couture designers like Cristóbal Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, Marc Bohan at Christian Dior, Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino Garavani, Halston and shoes by Roger Vivier.
She was one of the models to wear capri pants by Emilio Pucci. She was photographed for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Woman's Wear Daily by Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, John Rawlings, Toni Frissell, Horst P. Horst, Slim Aarons and Henry Clarke. She was painted by artista like René Bouché, Kenneth Paul Block and Alejo Vidal-Quadras.
She appeared on the International Best Dressed List from 1959 through 1963. The year after she was elevated into its Hall of Fame.

Rumour of espionage

There is a long-standing rumor that Gloria Guinness was employed as a spy at some point and that when she married her fourth husband, she had no valid passport and was legally stateless. This rumor is substantiated to a certain degree by her appearance in a series of supposedly nonfiction books written by Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones. Griffith knew Guinness during World War Two and was a friend, fellow spy, and sometime adversary of Guinness. Guinness was an almost legendary character by this point, the glamorous "Countess von Fürstenberg" who maintained friendships with important Nazis, including Hermann Göring and even Adolf Hitler himself, and lived in neutral Madrid throughout the latter days of the Second World War as an espionage agent for the Axis.

Personal life

Gloria Rubio was married four times. Her first marriage, to Jacobus Hendrik Franciscus Scholtens, a Dutch-born, Veracruz-based sugar-factory superintendent, took place in Mexico City on 31 March 1933. Rubio was 20, and the groom, a son of Jan Scholtens and Maria Le Comte, was 47. They later divorced.
Her second marriage was to Franz-Egon Maria Meinhard Engelbert Pius Aloysius Kaspar Ferdinand Dietrich, third Graf von Fürstenberg-Herdringen, whom she married on October 4, 1935, in Kensington, London, England; she was his second wife and had a stepdaughter from her husband's first marriage, the actress Betsy von Furstenberg. By him, she had two children:
Her third marriage was to Ahmad-Abu-El-Fotouh Fakhry Bey, whom she married in 1946 and divorced in 1949. The only child of Princess Fawkia of Egypt, Countess Wladimir d’Adix-Dellmensingen, and her first husband, Mahmud Fakhry Pasha, he was a grandson of King Fuad I of Egypt and a nephew of Princess Fawzia of Egypt and of King Farouk I of Egypt.
Her fourth, and final, marriage was to Group Captain Thomas Loel Guinness, a Member of Parliament and a member of the extended Guinness beer family, though his particular branch made its fortune in banking and real estate. They married on April 7, 1951, in Antibes. By this marriage she had three stepchildren: Patrick Benjamin Guinness ; William Loel Seymour Guinness, and Belinda Guinness, wife of 5th and last Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.
Among Guinness's lovers were David Beatty, 2nd Earl Beatty, and the British ambassador to France Duff Cooper, who wrote of her, "I have never loved anybody physically so much or been so supremely satisfied".
In 1980, Gloria Guinness died of a heart attack at Villa Zanroc in Epalinges, Switzerland. She is buried next to her last husband at the Bois de Vaux Cemetery in Lausanne.

Descendants

Through her daughter Dolores and stepson Patrick, she was the grandmother of Maria Alexandra Guinness, who married Foulques, Count de Quatrebarbes in 1979, and, after their divorce, Neville Cook; Loel Patrick Guinness ; and Victoria Guinness, who married Philip Niarchos in 1984, son of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos.

Residences

The Guinnesses had an apartment in Manhattan's Waldorf Towers, an 18th-century farmhouse called Villa Zanroc in Epalinges near Lausanne, a 350-ton yacht, an apartment on Avenue Matignon in Paris, decorated by Georges Geffroy, a stud farm in Normandy, Haras de Piencourt, and Gemini, a mansion at Manalapan, Florida.
The Florida property, which is divided by U.S. Highway A1A, faces the lake on one side and the ocean on the other; the two halves of the building, which was designed in the 1940s by architect Marion Syms Wyeth for Gerald Lambert, were ingeniously connected by a sound-proofed living room that was set beneath the bisecting road. In addition, the Guinnesses built a house in Acapulco, Mexico. They also kept three aircraft: an Avro Commander for short trips around Europe, a small jet, and a helicopter for Loel Guinness's hops between the Manalapan house and the Palm Beach golf course.

Philanthropy

Among the seventeen outfits, twelve hats and pairs of shoes that she donated were a 1948 Balenciaga evening gown of organdy with flock flowers, an evening gown from 1965, a 1949 hand-painted evening gown by Marcelle Chaumont and a 1950s evening gown by Jeanne Lafaurie, the only dress by that designer in the collection of Victoria & Albert Museum.