Women’s Wear Daily is known for capturing the voices of a generation as they enter the zeitgeist. Gloria Steinem was one of them. In a poignant yet telling 1966 interview, she had already captured WWD’s eye in 1965; the woman she was destined to become had already arrived.
As WWD and others reflect on her contributions to culture, politics and women’s rights, it is only fitting to revisit the moment she stepped into WWD’s purview. “The Girl of Her Dreams,” from the pages of WWD, The Fashions on Aug. 31, 1966, offers a peek into Steinem’s opinion of herself and fashion — before she perhaps knew the scale of her influence.
SHE WAS ON TIME AND FRIENDLY. It only took her a minute to settle her tall thin Pucci-ed figure behind a corner table of the sidewalk restaurant. After combing her fashionable hair with a few quick strokes and then a couple of glances at her reflection in the window, she relaxed.
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A drink would make her sleepy. Just a hamburger would do.
THREE YEARS AGO WHEN SHE WAS 28, and her hair was fashionably shorter, long curvy Gloria Steinem maneuvered as a Playboy Bunny and then wrote about it in Show. More recently her shapely legs crossed several pages of Life as Gloria stamped the meaning “camp.” Gloria has been doing this kind of freelance writing for the past five years … ever since she stopped studying at Smith, and the Universities of Geneva, Oxford and Delhi. (She picked up a Phi Beta Kappa on the way.)
At this point, she can tell you, without dropping a name, about her experiences with Jackie Kennedy, Prince Philip, Mike Nichols, Senator Javits, Felicia Bernstein, Phyllis Newman, Tom Wolfe, Clay Felker, Mary Lindsay, Eugenia Sheppard and on and on.
Gloria, however, always makes her own evaluations. She says of a celebrity usually appreciated for her individuality — “I didn’t think she was an original. I often found her repeating many of my opinions.” Or of an admired movie couple — “I wanted to ask the wife how it felt to have a husband who is so much less smart than she.”
In between reading and writing is the third R for romance. At one time Gloria almost married a government official “who changed the course of history. Only, I got cold feet.”
CHEERS FOR THE GIRL FROM MIDDLE-CLASS TOLEDO, Ohio, who says she never really went to school until she was 12. Her father, who thought of himself in show business, was an itinerant antique dealer in the winter and resort owner in summer.
Gloria plus mother (former newspaper editor, with a teaching certificate) and nine-year-older sister Susanne lived in a trailer. Gloria taught herself how to read and continued reading to herself until her mother and father were divorced and she settled with her mother for more conventional schooling.
“When I was about 12 I wanted to be a dancer. The Rockettes were my ideal.” But she kicked that idea over for ballet. And that was sidestepped for college. “I thought it would be fun to do musical comedy at night and writing during the day.”
By the time she was enrolled at Smith, she had read so many novels she thought it would be frivolous to major in literature. Government was more challenging. “Politics is my single favorite subject.” Gloria is also an adviser to the Peace Corps.
Those people who evaluate success in terms of who-dya-know-and what-have-ya-done … would certainly say yes to Gloria. But, Gloria says no. Although she appreciates the “unlimited possibilities” of being uncommitted to a job or marriage, Gloria says, “It’s like wading rather than swimming.”
GLORIA WANTS TO GET ALL WET. “I would like to be married and to have children. To feel really responsible for someone. It’s a waste of time if you are not. Like building a lot of foundations without any houses. But I can never make the final decision.” Gloria admits the decision is usually hers.
“But then I probably pick men who want to marry more than I do.” Although she hates breaking off a relationship with a man, “there is never any marriage pressure and the future possibilities again are always unlimited.”
Her idea of a lovable man is “a man who has a dream … someone who can bring the world into his own life.” Her current year-old relationship is with a dreamy TV writer-producer and handsomely gray before his time, Herb Sargent. “He is everything J.D. Salinger is supposed to be. Very open. All accepting and all understanding.”
Gloria smiles when she quickly adds, “I don’t think I could ever marry a man who voted for Nixon or Goldwater unless he was deaf, dumb or blind.” She admires President Kennedy who understood many different worlds and Martin Buber who put everything into proportion.
She points to what she considers a “tragic life.” She met the girl “who was like a tiny Katharine Hepburn” again recently at a Smith 10th-year reunion. “In school she was a marvelous writer. But she hasn’t written a word since. As for her marriage, she is a total mystery to her husband.”
GLORIA WOULD REALLY FEEL IN THE SWIM if she could write fine fiction. “I am afraid of the self-exposure. So much more of the writer’s attitudes and tastes are revealed in fiction. In nonfiction you are dealing more with other people’s ideas and feelings.”
She admires the writings of Isak Dinesen, E.M. Forster, William Gaddis, Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger and all the Russians because “There is a mystical quality in their writing. They don’t put a ceiling on human experience.”
In her transition from a detached girl from Toledo with a “classical Marxist” view to an integrated New Yorker with a “Keynesian socialist” outlook, she has become more tolerant. “I used to think that the ladies on the Best Dressed List should be the first to be shot in the socialist revolution. But that was just a silly prejudice. It’s just as dumb to hate the rich as it is the poor. Now I understand it’s just an advertising gimmick.” But then she says, “If I found myself nominated for the list, I would know there was something wrong with my life.
“I love clothes, and I am getting over feeling guilty about it. They make me feel better, look better, etc. The whole thing just has to be in perspective.”
Gloria says Tom Wolfe has taught her to see clothes as an “expression of the times.” “He calls it symbolic sociology. You start with the item and then analyze what makes a person buy it.”
SHE HAS NO SPECIAL FEELING ABOUT DESIGNER CLOTHES. “Who cares about the label?” And she could never accept the price tags of the Paris Couture. “The only thing I have more than one of is Pucci and that’s because you can wear them summer and winter.” Otherwise her clothes come from Bendel’s or anywhere she finds them. Sometimes it’s Loehman’s. For special things she has a dressmaker. Her underwear comes from Blackton’s, shoes are from Fiorentina and she has eight pairs of boots from an Italian store near West 56th Street where she lives. Raymond at Bendel’s does her hair.
Rather than shopping, Gloria (who is half a countess on her mother’s side) would rather spend that non-working time with friends in and out of the Celebrity Register “who have done more than inherit a name and a bank account. Whatever they are, they have made it themselves.
— TONI KOSOVER
