HOME TRUTHS

Settling down after a life on the road, legendary feminist Gloria Steinem finds contentment and a new mission in her Manhattan brownstone, with help from designer Jane Hallworth

- SARAH MEDFORD

RIGHT A BATHROOM SHELF FEATURES MEMENTOS FROM GLORIA STEINEM'S LIFE, INCLUDING A COLLECTION OF PINS AND POLITICAL BADGES. OPPOSITE STEINEM (WEARING A VALENTINO BLOUSE, NILI LOTAN CORDUROY TROUSERS, CHANEL BOOTS, WITH A JOSEFF OF HOLLYWOOD SILVER NECKLACE AND KARL LAGERFELD PROTOTYPE BRACELETS) IN THE SECOND FLOOR LIVING ROOM OF HER NEW YORK CITY RESIDENCE. BLOUSE AND JEWELRY FROM LILY ET CIE; FASHION STYLING BY NINA AND CLARE HALLWORTH.

After moving to New York City in her mid-20s, Gloria Steinem made a list of the things about it that scared her. One of those things was dining specifically, the fact that people in New York tended to sit down for meals rather than stand in front of an open refrigerator. Now 90, Steinem still prefers grazing to cooking. And given the length of her overstuffed CV, the tireless feminist, journalist, activist, and advocate for all manner of disenfranchised people makes a solid case for skipping out on seated dinners. Still, she keeps a colorful cache of kitchen magnets in her longtime apartment on the Upper East Side, from Frida Kahlo and Susan B. Anthony to Wonder Woman and the Mona Lisa.

A few years ago, it fell to the interior designer Jane Hallworth to freshen up a home for these magnets and the rest of Steinem's possessions after a mutual acquaintance introduced them. Hallworth was intrigued, and found her new client to be delightfully easygoing. "There's something so utterly approachable about Gloria," says the designer, who has spent much of her career working with A-list actors and other creatives in Los Angeles. "But it's an approachable moment on Mount Olympus."

As Hallworth surveyed Steinem's duplex in an 1880s brownstone-warmly lit spaces ruffled by a sirocco wind of near eastern textiles, kilims, jewel-colored crystals, and leopardprint pillows-she realized that this was, in fact, said Olympus.