I was named, in part, after the legendary actress Audrey Hepburn, who is as duly admired for her on-screen charm and talent as she is for her philanthropic ventures off the screen.
I have always felt a strong connection to Hepburn (beyond the fact that we share a name) not only because she, like me, was trained as a ballet dancer, but also because we share a penchant for classic and modest clothing. While dressing like Audrey has become a sartorial cliché in our time, the Hepburn staples—monochrome black, flats, turtlenecks, cropped trousers, etc.—are timelessly elegant nonetheless.
When news that designer Hubert de Givenchy had passed away earlier this month, I witnessed the internet mourn the designer and memorialize his decades-long artistic collaboration with Hepburn. Many knew Givenchy as the creative mastermind behind Hepburn’s “little black dress” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The image of Holly Golightly clad in oversized sunglasses and her iconic bateau neck dress occupies a space on many bedroom walls.
Their relationship was certainly a symbiotic one. For Audrey, it was the garçonne inspired collections of elegant cocktail dresses, suits and coats synonymous with sophistication, while Givenchy provided the physical fabric on which Audrey was inaugurated as an icon of style. Most importantly, however, their relationship was one built fundamentally on a genuine respect and wholehearted adoration for one another, qualities which seem conspicuously lacking in the modern designer-model complex.
It’s a shame that celebrities and models seem to now flit from one designer to another, bound by contract to wear a designer’s clothes rather than doing so out of true devotion.
I think, then, it’s fair to say that no pair in the history of cinema or fashion embodied, or will embody, for that matter, the artist-muse dynamic quite like Audrey and Givenchy.
