GLORIA GUINNESS
GLORIA GUINNESS
27 August 1912 – 9 November 1980 Truman Capote’s Swan
Gloria Guinness was a Mexican socialite and editor of Harper’s Bazaar (1963-1971). She was named one of the ‘most elegant woman in the World’, by Eleanor Lambert the founder of the Met Gala. Gloria was best known for being a close friend to writer Truman Capote.
Gloria Alatorre was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. Her father was a journalist and her mother who came from a Spanish colonial landowning family from Jalisco, who made a fortune in sugar. Her father was persecuted during the Mexican Revolution and died in exile due to health complications in San Antonio, Texas when she was five. Due to the Cristero War the family left and moved to Mexico City.
Gloria was married four times, to men who were all well-off. Her third marriage was to royalty, when she married the grandson of King Faud I of Egypt. She married Thomas Loel Guinness in 1951 and she had numerous lovers during the marriage. She owned wealthy apartments all over the world including in Manhattan’s Waldorf Towers, owned a 350-ton yacht, an apartment in Paris, a farm and a mansion in Florida.
Truman Capote named Gloria one of his ‘swans’, a group of his wealthy female friends who inspired him for characters in his book. She met Capote in the 1950s and he would often be with her during family trips and when attending parties. Truman wrote, "...for the most part, the ultra-rich have literal minds, and they find excessive wit dangerous, even subversive. That was a lesson Gloria never cared to heed." Even though she was one of Truman’s close friends, she wasn’t portrayed in the series, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.
Gloria died of a heart attack in Epalinges in 1980, aged 68.
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