Martha Stewart Is a Glamorous Budding Media Mogul in Throwback Photo

Believe it or not, there was a time when Martha Stewart wasn’t permanently a wise master of hosting, conservatively dressed, and sporting a perfectly coiffed blonde bob. Stewart proved as much on Wednesday, when she posted a throwback photo of herself on her (excellent) Instagram account that made the internet go wild.

“My assistant found this great photo of me in my library at turkey hill Wish it was taken last month !!!photo by Henry wolf,” she captioned the picture, in which the former model wears a black strapless minidress with sheer black pantyhose and black pumps and poses by an armchair, surrounded by books and flowers. Perhaps most surprising of all is Stewart’s hair, which falls well past her shoulders and isn’t sleekly styled to frame her face.

Though Stewart doesn’t reveal exactly when the glamorous snapshot was taken, her dress and hair point toward the 1980s, before Stewart had built her far-reaching media brand from the bottom up, before she’d become the first self-made female billionaire in the U.S., and before she met Snoop Dogg. She does mention in the caption that the photo was taken at Turkey Hill, the Westport, Connecticut, farmhouse she and then-husband Andrew bought in 1971. In the decades spanning from then until Stewart sold the property, in the early 2000s, she oversaw several renovations of the home and took her fans inside it in the pages of her cookbooks, as she explained in a post on her website.

“Turkey Hill was a dream place for my family and me for many years. It taught us, it nurtured us, it fed us, and it occupied us in so many wonderful and instructive ways. I would not be who I am today without the vast knowledge I gained there, on that small bit of paradise,” Stewart wrote in her magazine in 2007. “I was always so pleased when friends exclaimed about the lushness of the gardens, the beauty of the tree peonies, the vigor of the climbing roses, and the size of the cabbages. I knew that the special exposure — the gentle sloping of the land to the warmth of Long Island Sound — and the protection of the high stone wall and the cedar fencing created a sheltered garden of great possibilities.”

Please, once you catch your breath from Stewart’s beauty, also take a moment to appreciate the three-tiered table filled with dozens of separate floral arrangement.

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