Fashion

Abstract This chapter discusses Audrey Hepburn’s close relation with designer Hubert de Givenchy, which established her identification with haute couture. His clothes enhance her characters’ movement on-screen, offering a spectacle for viewer identification with her difference from other female stars to emerge at the same time, a difference reflected by her unorthodox body. It looks at the films that associated her with the designer and the particular designs that were influential. Givenchy designed clothes for Hepburn that facilitated her movement on-screen and did not conceal her skinniness, in contrast with the costumes Beaton did for My Fair Lady, which restricted her movement and tried to hide her body. In her films, notably Sabrina, Funny Face, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as well as making fashion a transformative event for her characters, Hepburn popularized “the little black dress”; additionally, her identification with black clothing, pants outfits especially, connoted her independence and intelligence.