The Jaguar #02

ICONS
and disarmed into giving him a lift home. “The Hotel Ritz,”
he instructs her. “It’s in the Place Vendôme.” “I know where
it is,” she says. “You’re a very chic burglar, aren’t you?”
Chicness is certainly something Hepburn knew about. In
collaboration with the young couturier Hubert de Givenchy,
she used her elfin face and slender figure to create a new
vector of beauty, an alternative to the busty 1950s
lusciousness of Marilyn Monroe and Anita Ekberg and the
unreachable hauteur of Vogue models such as Suzy Parker
and Lisa Fonssagrives. Modern women found her basic
style – narrow black trousers,
black ballet pumps, a plain black
turtleneck, large sunglasses,
perhaps a pony-tail – usable in all
circumstances, on or off duty.
Givenchy had first provided
Hepburn with costumes for
Sabrina, her second starring role,
in 1954. Apparently the designer
was momentarily disappointed,
on their first encounter, that she
turned out not to be Katharine
Hepburn, as he had expected. On
the face of it, few 1950s couturiers
would have been overjoyed by the
challenge of dressing such an
understated star. But no little black
dress has been more influential
than the one that made such an
impression in her portrayal of
Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards’
Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961.
“It was a kind of marriage,”
Givenchy told the journalist
Drusilla Beyfus. “Little by little
our friendship grew and with it
confidence in each other. I always
respected Audrey’s taste. She
was not like other movie stars in
that she liked simplicity.”
“His are the only clothes in
which I am myself,” she said. “He is
far more than a couturier; he is a
creator of personality.” Not that the
girl who lived through the Nazi
occupation of Holland with family
members executed and deported,
“Sometimes
her performance
in How to
Steal a Million
resembles
a two-hour
Givenchy
catwalk show”
54 THE JAGUAR