The little black dress. The simple turtleneck. The elegant ballet flats… Audrey Hepburn’s iconic image has long been associated with timeless grace, simplicity and style. At the start of Hepburn’s career, however, she was far from being perceived as a “classic beauty” by Hollywood’s aesthetic standards (Studlar 203) and was instead regarded a “counter-model” to the popular “voluptuous, hyper-sexualized femininity” (Gitlin 18). As a young woman who suffered from malnutrition while growing up in post-war Europe, Hepburn was considered “flat-chested”, “wide eyed”, “big nosed”, “too skinny”, “too tall” and “tomboyish” (Wasson 9) by the film industry at the time. Yet, with her unique physical attributes and a “gentle, kind, almost angelic” personality (Wasson 161), Hepburn gained broad appeal amongst filmmakers and audience alike, and left her own indelible influence in our society as a style icon and celebrity diplomat. This paper argues that Audrey Hepburn not only evolved personally and professionally to gain more confidence as an actress, but also transformed Hollywood and society’s view of femininity and fashion, and provided a template for celebrity diplomacy.

On-Screen and Off-Screen: Hepburn’s Stages of Transitions

    As a young ballerina with no prior experience in acting, Audrey Hepburn won the hearts of American producers in her early adulthood with her “wide eyes”, which hinted at a “perpetual curiosity” (Waason 8) that was eagerly sought after for the female protagonist of the stage production “Gigi”. Although Hepburn, responsibly citing her lack of formal training in acting, declined this attractive career opportunity as an actress, the casting director repeatedly persuaded Hepburn of her potential to become a successful actress (Wasson 11). The positive reception of the production “Gigi” confirmed the producers’ optimistic expectation of Hepburn’s abilities to perform on stage, and signaled her official transition from a dancer to an actress. Although this immediate success was rewarding to Hepburn and generated much public interest in the young actress, Hepburn remained incredibly humble and did not see herself as a star. Following this big transition in her personal and professional life, Hepburn had yet to gain self-confidence and embrace the spotlight as she rose from anonymity. Nevertheless, Hollywood filmmakers did not consider her lack of confidence and acting experience as drawbacks, but instead regarded Hepburn’s personal Cinderella story unique. Soon enough, Hepburn was offered numerous roles that matched her background, as well as her genuine and humble personality.

    Cinderella stories, which paralleled Hepburn’s personal growth to a large extent, penetrated Audrey Hepburn’s acting career. In Sabrina, one of Hepburn’s early films which won her significant acclaim, Hepburn portrayed the protagonist Sabrina, a chauffeur’s daughter who has grown up in the wealthy Larrabee family estate in Long Island. The character transforms from a desperate girl, unrequitedly in love with the patriarch’s younger son David, to a mature woman who wins David’s heart not only with her Parisian fashion as she returns home from France, but also with her confidence. In this Cinderella story, the protagonist played by Hepburn is no longer “reaching for the moon”, but becomes convinced that the “moon” would come reaching for her instead. Similarly, in the 1964 comedy My Fair Lady, Hepburn appeared on-screen as Eliza Dolittle, an “annoying cockney flower girl” who would evolve into a “duchess”-like woman under the rigorous tutelage of Professor Higgins (Cox).

     Despite the time that had elapsed during her acting career, the innocent-looking and introverted Audrey Hepburn still frequented “youthful, adolescent roles” (Studlar 312), and continued to evoke a sense of fragility. The 1961 romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany’s, however, marked Hepburn’s transition into a more confident actress who had begun to take control of the filming process. Up until this point, Hepburn’s fragility, displayed both on-screen and off-screen, had been a cherished asset that enabled filmmakers to create a nostalgic, wistful blend of emotions in their movies. Often considered the most challenging character for Hepburn to portray, Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany’s is an extroverted, spontaneous and eccentric New York playgirl whose personality significantly contrasted that of Hepburn. Unlike typical “Audrey-type characters” (Waason 165), the free-willed Holly strongly refuses to conform to social norms or compromise her values. To transition into this challenging new role that differed greatly from her various Cinderella’s, Hepburn could no longer charm the audience with her fragile innocence alone. Further paralleling the evolvement of her screen personas, Hepburn gradually “gained control of the scenes” through her  “increasing efforts to improvise” during the filming process of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a contrast to her “frequent feeling of stress” in her earlier career (Waason 167). Emerging from her Cinderella-like self, Hepburn “didn’t need [the director] to hold his hand out to her anymore” (Waason 153). Instead, Hepburn started “doing it on her own”, spontaneously improvising interesting acts so that “no two takes are identical” (Waason 167).

    However distinct or similar the plots are for each film, fashion has always helped Hepburn transition into her roles smoothly. The next section explores the reciprocal relationship between Hepburn and fashion by discussing the role of fashion in influencing Hepburn’s transitions and how in turn, Hepburn had transformed society’s ideal of fashion.

Hepburn’s Reciprocal Relationship with Fashion: Transitions to Transformations

     Film scholars including Studlar and Moseley discuss the significant role of fashion in Hepburn’s character developments on-screen. Hepburn’s Sabrina, they argued in Precocious Charms and Fashioning Film Stars, respectively, was able to grow and mature largely through the confidence she gained through her Parisian fashion that distinguished her from her longtime love interest David Larrabee’s other romantic subjects. According to Moseley, “clothes play an integral role” as Sabrina (ostensibly) transcends the boundaries of social class (117). Sabrina’s famous “little black dress”, for instance, features the color “black”, which had been rarely used in the film industry at the time partly due to the color’s association with widows, a vivid sign of the female dependency on their husbands (Waason 127). Hepburn’s character, however, evolves into an independent woman who challenges society’s established views on class. Costume items including the iconic “little black dress” served to convey symbolic messages to the audience.

     The role of fashion in aiding Hepburn’s transitions on-screen, perhaps not surprisingly, paralleled her personal life. Throughout her career, Hepburn kept a professional partnership with French designer Hubert Givenchy, who praised Hepburn as her “muse of fashion” whose body type is “perfect”, as it matched the Golden Ratio almost exactly (Cox). In addition to designing a significant amount of Hepburn’s most memorable screen costumes, Givenchy also helped construct Hepburn’s image as an icon by enhancing her unique brand of iconicity through his designs of Hepburn's personal wardrobe throughout her lifetime. In Hepburn’s own words, “They [Clothes] make me feel so sure of myself (Moseley 109).”

     Hepburn’s interconnected character developments on-screen and personal transformations off-screen resulted in social implications. The ways in which the movies were filmed did not tend to center Hepburn’s acting skills, but instead had a focus on feminine fashion, as exemplified by the close-up shots of Sabrina’s waist and “long, skinny legs” (Moseley 110). Not only did Hepburn’s style generate commercial success for designers including Givenchy (who could not handle the “increasing amount of customers since Sabrina”), it also played a transformative role in creating a social thirst for the “Hepburn look” at the dawn of the post-war period, prior to which women had to take on masculine roles as men left the households for wars (Moseley 110). The “Hepburn look”, which emerged at a time when women desired to “look like women again” (Moseley 111), inspired American society at large to consider skinniness and youthfulness as beautiful and feminine, to reconcile the apparent conflict between youthfulness and sophistication, and to embrace haute couture as a youthful concept (Moseley 223). The growing influence of the media further magnified Hepburn and her personas’ individual transitions to the public, enabling a mass transformation in society’s way of thinking about fashion and femininity.   

Celebrity Diplomacy

     Later in Hepburn’s career, she embraced a new role as Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations (Gitlin 203). No longer an actress at this point, Hepburn was fairly independent of her professional obligations (Waason 151). This shift would enable Hepburn to become an early epitome of a “celebrity diplomat” as described in scholar Andrew Cooper’s book Celebrity Diplomacy, who used her “star power” and “genuine emotional appeal” in raising awareness (Cooper 7). In the opening chapter, Cooper describes later celebrity diplomats including Princess Diana and Angelina Jolie as “followers of the Audrey Hepburn model of celebrity diplomacy” (9). In this regard, Hepburn had once again transformed an aspect of society, this time, of non-political diplomacy.

     Although Cooper considers Audrey Hepburn’s legacy a “benign imprint” through her performance as a celebrity diplomat and recognizes Hepburn’s inspirational role in celebrity diplomacy by stating that her acts of kindness wereto be “acts hard to follow” (18), he considers Hepburn a naive social advocate who lacked outspokenness on controversial issues. Labeling her a “glamorous enthusiast” who was “celebrated but conformist” (Cooper 18), Cooper comments that Jolie has been more “open and outspoken” in her endeavors as a celebrity diplomat than Hepburn ever was (18). Whilst Hepburn’s “emotional zeal” in her involvement with the United Nations (Cooper 19) had been fully acknowledged in relation to her personal affiliation with UN organizations from her childhood in Europe, Cooper sees Hepburn’s “attitude toward the political and diplomatic dynamics” affecting the Ethiopian situation to be “naive” (19), citing her frequent use of biblical analogies in those diplomatic situations. Arguably, however, since celebrity diplomacy fundamentally differs from regular (political) diplomacy in its freedom from conforming to individual government’s interests and its potential to exploit iconicity and the celebrity’s brand image as potential assets to attract more audience to the social cause, one might wonder if film stars like Hepburn should even be expected to “not be naive” in the first place. The question would therefore be open to contention.

Hepburn’s Image Through Her Phases of Transitions

    From a European ballerina born to an aristocratic Belgian and English family to an award-winning actress, Givenchy’s “muse of fashion”, and an “angel” who embodied the charitable endeavors of UNICEF, Hepburn had been consistently associated with positive images (Moseley 111). If one were to consider “the Audrey Style” as a brand that transcends fashion (Moseley 111), it would most likely be one that is elegant, charming, simplistic, and kind. Despite the flood of scholarly and non-scholarly sources that focus on Hepburn, there is very little criticism, or even any tinge of gentle skepticism, of the global icon. The actress was able to construct and maintain a positive brand image throughout her stages of transitions throughout her phases of transitions and the social legacy that she had left.

    Like other aspects in her life, Hepburn’s acting skills and sense of fashion were both reviewed positively, despite the amount of close scrutiny that she received as a public figure and international icon. Nevertheless, in his article titled “Audrey Hepburn: An Iconic Problem”, Cox identifies Hepburn’s primary problem as “a strong actor, with a great capacity for comedy” as her decisions to turn down certain offers due to the nature of “the material that was offered”, and that as a result, she was not able to act as frequently. Cox discusses some of the tradeoffs that Hepburn faced such as her dedication to her family, which eventually limited her to “stretch herself, to do things differently”. Studlar, on the other hand, mildly critiques the well-disguised vulnerability in Hepburn’s iconic image from the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “Beneath her sunglasses is a hidden sense of insecurity, of exposure” (120). According to Studlar, Hepburn’s screen personas, as protagonists of different stories, choose to dress themselves in a way that their clothes would serve as “social armors” to reconcile the oscillations between “the pleasure of being discovered and the anxiety of exposure”, “fashionable modernity and respectability”, and “ornament and protection” (120). Both Studlar and Cox’s arguments relate back to the aforementioned vulnerability in the generally positive image of the angelic icon whose transitions on and off-screen continuously transformed society’s ideal fashion and femininity. After all, Hepburn was not divine. She was not entirely devoid of personal flaws.

Conclusions: The Echoing Effects of Hepburn’s Transitions and Transformations

      Audrey Hepburn’s image as a global icon remains here with us even decades after her death. Not only had Audrey Hepburn grown personally and professionally over the years, her iconic image has transformed society’s view of femininity, Hollywood’s sense of fashion, and celebrity diplomacy. To this day, the society still honors, celebrates and imitates Hepburn’s simplicity in taste, the effortless beauty enabled by her genuineness, as well as the good that Hepburn brought to humanity and its long lasting impacts as a model for future celebrity diplomats to come. Hepburn provided an epitome of how one could strive to maintain a coherently positive image despite having her life scrutinized by the public due to the curiosity she generated as a celebrity, and how a positive image could be long-lasting and even enhanced throughout the years despite the existence of certain personal flaws. It is noticeable how Hepburn’s stages of transitions as an individual and as an actress have in turn created echoing effects in the society worldwide, alongside her memorable iconic image and long-lasting, charismatic iconicity.

Works Cited

Cooper, Andrew Fenton. Celebrity Diplomacy. Boulder: Paradigm, 2008. Print.

Cox, Alex. "Audrey Hepburn: An Iconic Problem." The Guardian. The Guardian, 20 Jan. 2011. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jan/20/audrey-hepburn-breakfast-at-tiffanys>.

Gitlin, Marty. Audrey Hepburn : A Biography. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2009. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 9 Nov. 2014.

Moseley, Rachel. Fashioning Film Stars: Dress, Culture, Identity. London: BFI, 2005. Print.

Studlar, Gaylyn. Precocious Charms Stars Performing Girlhood in Classical Hollywood Cinema. Berkerley: U of California, 2012. Print.

Wasson, Sam. Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman. New York: HarperStudio, 2010. Print.