GLORIOUS … UNBROKEN

3 BOOKS IN A SLIP CASE

Since a very young age, a shy and introverted Gloria, born as Coloured in Apartheid South Africa, always enjoyed processing her feelings on paper.
After being urged and encouraged by a cherished friend to write her memoirs, Gloria eventually acquiesced and started this project, more than 12 years ago, fundamentally to leave as a legacy for her next of kin.
Notwithstanding her early life of relative comfort, she and her family had to deal with the iniquities of the Apartheid system of government in South Africa, leading to many a trying experience.
In her book, she chronicles her life, starting with her growing up years in relative comfort in the humble Coloured suburb of Elsie’s River in the Western Cape, to now alternate between her spectacular hideaways in the picturesque Alps of Switzerland and exquisite villas along breathtaking coastlines of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in South Africa.
Gloria shares with the reader her many joys and triumphs as well as painful deceit and sorrow. Her aspirational and motivational spirit allowed her to be accepted into a Whites Only beauty school in Cape Town and to graduate with distinction. After being nominated onto the coveted list of South Africa’s Best Dressed Woman in 1988, she was honoured to walk away with the title and remained on the nominee list in 1989 and 1990.
She shares the challenges and stumbling blocks she and her renowned fashion designer brother, Errol, faced with determination and passion to succeed in their business partnership that reached great heights.
She relates her humiliating experiences at the hands of the Apartheid laws, two failed marriages, the second of which involved heart wrenching deceit and a seven-year estrangement from her brother and younger sister, as well as the deeply touching death of her beloved, aged mother. She found happiness and a partner in her present marriage that shares the same motivating spirit to live life to the full and to enrich the lives of those less fortunate.

Gloria Arendz Theiler was born Gloria Arendse in 1957 in Elsie’s River, where she grew up and spent her formative years. At age 18 she qualified from Estelle Ahlers’ beauty school as South Africa’s first beautician of colour, having been fortunate to be mistaken as Portuguese in order to circumvent the racial laws of Apartheid South Africa. She formed a successful business partnership with her brother, renowned fashion designer Errol Arendz, which started in 1977 and lasted for 30 years, when she relocated to her second home in Zurich, Switzerland with her two daughters and later her son.She is currently married to Swiss businessman Rolf Theiler and their living arrangements alternate between Switzerland and South Africa. She has been blessed with five beautiful grandchildren, whom she dotes on.