The Gilded Age: Portraits of the Real-Life Vanderbilts, As Seen in Vogue

Thanks to The Gilded Age, there’s been a surge of interest in the Vanderbilts—the prominent railroad family on whom the HBO show is based on. Although it certainly didn’t come from nowhere: since the mid-1800s, when they made their fortune, the Vanderbilts have always held the fascination of the American public due to their massive wealth, extreme power, lavish parties, and occasional scandal.

As a result, they were frequent subjects in the pages of Vogue, which was founded in 1892 as a fashion and society magazine. We hired illustrators to sketch Consuelo Vanderbilt on her 1895 wedding day to the Duke of Marlborough, and when photography became mainstream in the 1900s, we had them sit for formal portraits with the preeminent photographers of the time. In the 1920s, Edward Steichen captured Consuelo Vanderbilt (the namesake niece of the Duke of Marlborough) at her wedding to E.T. Smith.

Two decades later, Cecil Beaton photographed Grace Vanderbilt at her Fifth Avenue mansion. The wife of Cornelius “Neily” Vanderbilt III was the last Vanderbilt to be considered the unofficial ruler of New York society, just like her forebears Alva and Alice Vanderbilt. Her lavish parties were legendary for both their impressive guest lists (which boasted European royals like Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany) and their expense. “I feel deeply for poor dear Marie Antoinette, for if The Revolution came to America I should be the first to go,” she once said. (In the 1940s, Grace and her husband Neily sold their mansion, where many of their fêtes were held, to the Astors.) Fast forward to the 1960s and ’70s, and Horst P. Horst found a glamorous muse in heiress-turned-model Gloria Vanderbilt. As for today? Her son, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, has been photographed for Vogue by Norman Jean Roy.

Below, see the Vanderbilt family in Vogue throughout the 20th and 21st centuries—including some of the very real-life figures who inspired the characters of The Gilded Age.