Gloria Guinness

Early life

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, she was a daughter of José Rafael Rubio Torres (1880-1916), a journalist, and his wife, Maria Luisa Dolores Alatorre Diaz (b. 1882). She had two elder siblings: Rafael and Maria Luisa.

Marriages

Gloria Rubio was married four times, her spouses being:

1 Jacobus Hendrik Franciscus Scholtens, a Dutch-born, Veracruz-based sugar-factory superintendent, whom she married in Mexico City on March 31, 1933. Rubio was 20, and the groom, son of Jan Scholtens and Maria Le Comte, was 47. They later divorced.

2 Franz-Egon Maria Meinhard Engelbert Pius Aloysius Kaspar Ferdinand Dietrich, third Graf von Fürstenberg-Herdringen (1896–1975), 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:

1. Maria Alexandra (born 1956); married Foulques, Count de Quatrebarbes (born 1948) in 1979, and, after their divorce, Neville Cook.
2. Loel Patrick (born 1957).
3. Victoria Christina (born 1960) married Philip Niarchos in 1984, son of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos.

3 Ahmad-Abu-El-Fotouh Fakhry Bey (1921–1998), 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 (the first wife of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran) and of King Farouk I of Egypt.

4 Group Captain Thomas Loel Guinness, a Member of Parliament (1906–1988) 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 (1931-1965); William Loel Seymour Guinness (born 1939), and Belinda Guinness (born 1941), 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".

Rumour of espionage

There is a long-standing rumor that Gloria Guinness was employed at some point as a spy and that when she married her fourth husband, she had no valid passport and was legally stateless. This rumor is to a certain degree borne out by her appearance in a series of supposedly nonfiction books written by Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones, who knew her during World War Two and was a friend, fellow spy (originally on opposite sides, the Countess was still an American citizen during the war, and an employee of the OSS), and sometime adversary of Gloria, who was by this point an almost legendary character, 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.

Six homes around the world

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 property in Florida, bisected by U.S. Highway A1A, boasts views of both the lake and the ocean on its opposing sides. Designed in the 1940s by architect Marion Syms Wyeth for Gerald Lambert, the structure is uniquely comprised of two sections. These halves are cleverly united through a sound-proofed living room situated beneath the highway. Furthermore, the Guinness family constructed a residence in Acapulco, Mexico, and maintained a fleet of three aircraft: an Avro Commander for brief European journeys, a small jet, and a helicopter utilized by Loel Guinness for quick travel between the Manalapan home and the Palm Beach golf course.

Fashion

Guinness was dressed by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, Marc Bohan at Christian Dior, Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, 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. Artist like René Bouché, Kenneth Paul Block and Alejo Vidal-Quadras (1919–94) painted her. She appeared on the International Best Dressed List from 1959 through 1963. The year after she was elevated into its Hall of Fame.

Donations

She gave an enormous number of items to Victoria & Albert Museum from Cristóbal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, André Courrèges, Antonio del Castillo, Hubert de Givenchy, Hellstern and Jeanne Lafaurie, proving that she spread her commissions amongst many different couturiers.

Among the seventeen outfits, twelve hats and pairs of shoes that she donated were a 1948 Balenciaga evening gown of organdie 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.

Some items by Cristóbal Balenciaga and Elsa Schiaparelli were donated to The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Writing

Guinness wrote frequently for Harper's Bazaar, most famously asserting, in the magazine's July 1963 issue: "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."

Death

In 1980 Gloria Guinness died of a heart attack at Villa Zanroc in Epalinges, Switzerland. She is buried next to her last husband at Cimetière du Bois de Vaux in Lausanne.