Gloria Vanderbilt, who died Monday at age 95, was many things in her long life: an artist, author, actress, socialite, designer, pawn, tragic story, triumphant survivor, eternal optimist, mother and wife (multiple times), but for many in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she was also the name that helped changed denim forever.

“Gloria Vanderbilt” — that looping, cursive scrawl with the G and the V leaning right as if blown by a giant gust of wind (or enthusiasm), the d listing left, as if leaning in to confide a secret, all of it splashed across the back pockets of millions of tightfitting dark denim jeans — was, for a time, like a secret passport to a new world of style.

It promised a taste of the life that little Gloria had grown up to live, one marked by apartments on Park Avenue, Hollywood, self-invention and reinvention, beauty and fame in the face of all odds. Only thanks to Gloria Vanderbilt, all of a sudden everyone could have access to it.

She took the most democratic of all American basics and married it to a story seemingly lived entirely behind a velvet rope, and the combination altered everyone’s closet. If you think your clothes have nothing to do with Gloria Vanderbilt, think again.