Gloria Guinness

Gloria Guinness (née Rubio y Alatorre; 27 August 1912 – 9 November 1980), previously Countess Gloria von Fürstenberg-Herdringen, was a Mexican socialite and a contributing editor to Harper's Bazaar from 1963 to 1971. She was photographed by Cecil Beaton, Slim Aarons, Alejo Vidal-Quadras; designed for by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint-Laurent; and was also a close friend and inspiration to Truman Capote.

Gloria Rubio y Alatorre was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. She was the daughter of José Rafael Rubio y Torres (1880, Michoacán, México – 1916, San Antonio, Texas), a liberal journalist who supported Francisco I. Madero, for which he died in exile in the United States, and his wife, Maria Luisa Alatorre y Diaz-Ocampo (1882–1961, Zapotlán el Grande, Jalisco) who belonged to a Spanish colonial landowning family from Jalisco, who made their fortune in sugar (descendants of conquistador Don Diego de Ochoa-Garibay), partly described by their relative, Alfonso Reyes Ochoa, in his book Parentalia.

Through her paternal family, Gloria was a relative of the celebrated 19th-century art collector Ramón de Errazu y Rubio de Tejada and of the wealthy Mexican aristocrat Jesús Colón de Larreátegui y Vallarta (a direct descendant of the 1st Duke of Veragua, eldest son of Christopher Columbus). Gloria had two elder siblings: Rafael and Maria Luisa.

Gloria's childhood was unstable, mainly because of her father's political persecution during the Mexican Revolution and early death in exile (due to health complications at a health clinic in San Antonio, Texas when Gloria was five). She and her siblings spent most of their childhood with her mother's relatives, members of Mexican elite, such as the Ochoa-Garibay, Villaseñor-Jasso and Sánchez de Aldana families, with whom the Rubios lived for periods of time. Nevertheless, the Cristero War in Jalisco forced both them and their relatives to leave the countryside for Mexico City, where she eventually met her first husband.

Without any known explanation, Guinness frequently downplayed or directly lied about her origins, often saying she was from Veracruz, that her father was a revolutionary soldier killed in action, and that her mother was either a laundry maid or a seamstress. Her mysterious true origins were the cause of numerous rumors and speculation, many intended to diminish her social position, but eventually did little to damage her reputation as "the most elegant woman in the World,” in the words of Eleanor Lambert, founder of the Met Gala, New York Fashion Week and the International Best Dressed List.

Gloria Rubio was married four times.

Her first marriage to Jacobus Hendrik Franciscus Scholtens, the Dutch director of a sugar refinery estate in Veracruz 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 separated, shortly afterwards, and they finally divorced, in 1935, with no issue.

Her second marriage was to Franz-Egon Maria Meinhard Engelbert Pius Aloysius Kaspar Ferdinand Dietrich, third Graf von Fürstenberg-Herdringen (1896–1975), whom she married on 4 October 1935, in Kensington, England; this being the second marriage for both and making her a stepmother of actress Betsy von Furstenberg. They were the parents of: