Hillary Clinton Showed Up For Dinner at Gloria Steinem’s Townhouse – Vanity Fair

ON THE SCENE

We Gathered at Gloria Steinem’s Townhouse to Remember a Legend. Then Hillary Clinton Showed Up. At a dinner to commemorate a feminist icon, the former Madame Secretary had some thoughts on the 2026 election and what the Bluenami means for President Trump now that so many women have been swept into power.

By Elise Taylor
November 14, 2026

It’s a dark and stormy November night at Gloria Steinem’s townhouse, and Hillary Clinton has something to say about the 2026 election. “One of my most anticipated moments will be watching Donald Trump walk into the State of the Union through the now more than one hundred women members of the House of Representatives. I just want them all to stare at him and say, ‘You fired us from jobs we were qualified for. You insulted us. You demeaned our ambition. You undermined our place in government and society. And we’re here.’”

The former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate is a last-minute but highly anticipated arrival to this dinner honoring Steinem, the late activist. She passed away in September, but the feminist pathfinder was known for throwing these salon-type events (she called them “circles”) at her Upper East Side townhouse, which she bought for just $30,000 in the late ’60s.

It’s overflowing with books (I spy Marilyn by Norman Mailer, Jane Fonda’s War by Mary Hershberger, and several Eleanor Roosevelt biographies on the shelves), pictures (there’s one framed of Steinem alongside Mariska Hargitay) and Indian art. (Steinem spent two formative years in the country.) There are magnets in her kitchen of Wonder Woman, Frida Kahlo, and a cloth finger puppet of Hillary Clinton.

A political button is pinned to it that says “Another Bitch for Hillary.” The whole place smells like a Cire Trudon candle, and everyone’s drinking negronis. (Which actually isn’t technically very Steinem—her favorite cocktail was a margarita — but the negronis go with the night’s dinner, prepared by Lilia chef Missy Robbins.) Yet this is one of the first events at the townhouse that Steinem herself isn’t here to lead.

Amy Richards, a feminist activist whom many consider to be the daughter Steinem never had—a title Richards rejects because her mentor “didn’t want kids” — stood up at one point to tell the crowd that this is what Steinem would have wanted. Growing up with a transient father and a mentally volatile mother, the late activist took near-obsessive care in maintaining a welcoming home she could share with others. “As long as I knew Gloria, she always said, ‘I just want my home to be the way it’s always been.’ She wanted it to be filled with people,” Richards says. “She didn’t grow up with a home. She was traveling the country for the first 10 years of her life and then lived with her mother, who was not very stable.”

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