Together with her enduring legacies in movie and design, Audrey Hepburn’s wedding ceremony dresses keep on to influence sartorial views and person expression. Her cultural impact can also be traced to her on- and off-screen bridal model, most famously to the patterns she wore over a 40-yr friendship and collaboration with Hubert de Givenchy. At the forefront and creation of everlasting vogue developments, Hepburn even inspired the contemporary bridal vogue entire world to embrace the black-and-white marriage costume after she debuted a strapless embroidered organza Givenchy robe in the course of a amazing party scene in 1954’s Sabrina.
“She is what persons imply when they say they want to search ‘classic and timeless,’ or ‘elegant but no fuss,’” claims Lily Kaizer, owner of luxury classic wedding-dress salon Content Isles.
The “Lucky” (Nearly) Marriage ceremony Dress
Whilst filming 1953’s Roman Holiday break, Hepburn was engaged to English industrialist James Hanson. So she commissioned the Fontana sisters, who also collaborated with Edith Head on Hepburn’s costumes in the film, to structure her wedding costume.
Tasteful and pared-down, Hepburn’s to start with wedding ceremony dress offered a glimpse into a manner icon’s definitive perspective: demure boatneck, prolonged sleeves, and a playful significant-small hemline. In the long run, she identified as off the nuptials and asked the sisters to donate the style and design. “[I want the dress] to be worn by a further woman for her wedding, potentially someone who could not at any time find the money for a costume like mine—the most lovely, very poor Italian woman you can come across,” the long run UNICEF ambassador reportedly mentioned.
The couturiers located a recipient, Amiable Altobella, and invited her to their Rome atelier for alterations. “The full expertise will have to have been outstanding for [Altobella and her fiancé],” says Kerry Taylor, founder of London-dependent Kerry Taylor Auctions, of the couple’s check out from the city of Latina.
“They had a few daughters and five grandchildren. Amiable reported, ‘I’ve had a satisfied relationship, so the dress introduced me luck’ and that was extremely considerably the experience when the gown was handed more than,” says Taylor, who auctioned the costume in 2009 for $23,000. “The whole family felt such pride at getting had a little something so specific and so one of a kind.”
The Balmain Marriage ceremony Costume
Right after a whirlwind romance, Hepburn married American actor Mel Ferrer on September 25, 1954, in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.