Steinem’s childhood was an itinerant one, with summers spent at the lakeside dance hall her father owned in Michigan. A change in the weather would prod the family to load up a house trailer and move on to Florida or California. “I remember driving, looking at houses with yards and fences and thinking, How great. I could live there and just walk to school,” she recalled. “I kind of realized, too, that maybe the people who lived there wanted to live in a trailer.”
To stay afloat, Steinem’s father would buy and sell antiques along the way. She was always drawn to richly colored and ornamented surfaces and the solidity of furnishings made to last.
Hallworth was the latest in a daisy chain of capable women who helped Steinem with her apartment, including Filippa Naess, a British interior designer who kept an eye out for colorful auction finds; Irene Kubota Neves, a writer and passionate gardener; and Laura Emrick, a decorative painter whose handiwork spans walls, cabinets, and the primary bedroom ceiling. Hallworth’s mission was decidedly more boots-on-the-ground.
“To be honest, when I walked in, my first thought was, What are we doing even touching this?” she admits. “Shouldn’t we just be getting out some quick-dry glue? Because it just felt so personal, and aged to perfection. But the reality was that the infrastructure needed fixing.”
Hallworth’s primary focus was on the bathrooms and the ground-floor kitchen, where, after replacing some plumbing, she added custom cabinetry painted aubergine, Calacatta Viola marble countertops around a farmhouse sink, and a new Fisher & Paykel range. In the master bath, peacock blue Clé tiles pave an arched bathing nook curtained in a sprigged floral from Una Malan. But the walls here and throughout were very much Steinem – a memory palace of images of family, friends, and the courageous women who have shared her beliefs in the feminist cause. Her bedroom was equally personal, with bookcases everywhere, Ralph Lauren bayadere-striped fabric on the walls, and her signature aviator glasses heaped on a bedside.
This article on Gloria Steinem’s home appeared in AD’s January 2025 issue.