Union of women and clothes – Weekend
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It’s 70 years since Roman Holiday, the film that launched Audrey Hepburn’s career. There is such an episode at the beginning: an American reporter, played by Gregory Peck, suddenly realizing that the girl sleeping on his couch is a princess, and immediately realizing the full commercial potential of this discovery, asks his editor how much a real big interview with her will cost. “A detailed conversation about international politics would cost 250,” the editor cautiously starts. “But her views on fashion are much more expensive, perhaps a thousand.”
It’s a funny dialogue, especially considering that for most of the film (all day) the princess enjoys her Roman freedom in a simple sun skirt, tied with a wide belt at her unimaginable waist, and a white blouse, which she at some point – right after how he makes a short haircut – rolls up his sleeves. This outfit was designed by the great Hollywood costume designer Edith Head, but Audrey Hepburn owes the furore not so much to him, but to the scene in the hairdresser and the scene of buying flat shoes in the Roman street market – instead of boats in which she ran away from the palace. The ease in changing her appearance and, most importantly, the ease of this new appearance itself will determine her image almost forever.
Against the background of luxurious curves and stone busts of the main stars of the 1950s – subtlety and swiftness; against the backdrop of multi-carat jewelry collections and multi-kilogram couture collections – simple haircuts and simple silhouettes. Cecil Beaton, speaking about the phenomenon of Audrey, notes that such a type appeared on the post-war screen for the first time, and calls her “the embodiment of a new female ideal.” After the “Roman Holiday”, which brought Hepburn “Oscar”, the editors of all newspapers and magazines dreamed of knowing her views on fashion.
These views quickly began to boil down to a single name – Hubert de Givenchy, it is he who is considered to be the creator of her “image”. Like most pop culture myths, repeated from text to text, from reels to reels and from telegram to telegram, it is based on something that actually happened, but not quite like that and not even like that at all. Givenchy will reappear in Hepburn’s post-Roman Holiday life in Sabrina, her second Hollywood film, in which she will play the chauffeur’s daughter in a vast Long Island estate, who goes to Paris for two years to study as a chef, returns transformed and conquered before. the sons of the owner of the estate who did not notice her. This simple-minded story in its sexism required a real Parisian wardrobe – that’s what Givenchy made for the picture. Later, he would design dresses for many of her films (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Love Afternoon, Funny Face, Charade), but Edith Head would still be the costume designer for most of them.
And if in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” both black dresses of Holly Golightly (with a pearl necklace and with a huge black hat) were invented by Givenchy, then her other, no less famous image is a large white men’s dress shirt over a naked body and a tiffany-colored sleep mask – thought by Head. Givenchy also made an outfit for her second wedding in 1969 – a pale pink mini dress with a high waist and a high collar, a small scarf on her head, tight tights and gloves, all to match the dress. For that time, it was a very bold, not at all traditional bride’s outfit, especially brides of almost 40 years old.
Audrey and Givenchy were friends until her death in 1993, but she wore – both in life and in movies – not only Givenchy. So, for example, she lived a lot in Rome and dressed there with Valentino. And her son Luca Dotti recalled that for a long time he did not understand why everyone said that his mother was a style icon: he saw her mostly in jeans and T-shirts.
What was unique in her physical appearance and what made her a phenomenon on the screen – high growth (always ballet flats and loafers were also needed in order not to be taller than on-screen and other partners), extreme thinness, flat chest and woman’s face – child, remained with her for a long time, almost until the end of her career, until Two on the Road (1967). After that, she almost stopped acting and in the next film, Robin and Marian (1976), she appeared already in the image of a definitely middle-aged woman.
In Two for the Road, Hepburn does not wear Givenchy dresses, but, on the contrary, avant-garde Paco Raban and Mary Quant. And it turns out that long trapeze dresses in psychedelic colors, radical mini-dresses and outfits made of shining metal plates suit her no less than impeccable Parisian elegance. Rather, it is she who suits them all – both bohemian chic and even eccentric sit on her like a glove; a striped swimsuit with oversized glasses or some giant clip-on clips with a super short haircut from Two for the Road look as iconic as the famous black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
The strength of her personal image, physical and, let’s say, mental, was such that any outfit – black leggings with a black turtleneck in “Funny Face”, a black-embroidered white ball gown with a Sabrina train, a dark brown bonnet and the black Charade glasses, the neat tweed jackets, and the slicked-back hair of her later UNICEF ambassador days, all looked absolutely organic on her, because she was absolutely organic herself.
This talent – the ability to wear clothes without any demonstrativeness and tension, with convincing nonchalance, to move in it, both in life and on the screen, with absolute naturalness and ease – was unique and absolute, and it seems that the designers and artists who made her clothes, rather obeyed her image than created their own. There were more dazzling beauties in Hollywood than Audrey Hepburn, there were more talented actresses than Audrey Hepburn, but there was no second Audrey. And the fact that almost every Hollywood generation is still looking for a new Audrey, and not, for example, a new Elizabeth Taylor, confirms this.
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