“She deliberately looked different from other women and dramatized her own slenderness into her chief asset” - Edith Head (Chief costume designer at Paramount)
Since her debut in Roman Holiday, Audrey rejected Hollywood’s standards of beauty. At a time when Marilyn Monroe was considered the ultimate sex symbol: blonde hair, hourglass figure, and exuding sex appeal, Audrey, unwittingly, ushered in a new era femininity. Despite her own personal insecurities, which she had been more than candid about—her thinness, her small chest, the size of her nose, her crooked teeth, and large feet—Audrey learned to embrace her limitations and emphasize her flaws. With the help of her friend and French couturier, Hubert de Givenchy, together the two created “The Audrey Hepburn Look.” Instead of hiding or minimizing her small waist, long neck, and ballerina posture, they dramatized it with the help of his designs and Audrey’s model figure. Her makeup artists would overdraw her eyebrows to exaggerate their fullness and emphasize her famous doe eyes. The idea was to learn to accept your imperfections as oppose to camouflaging them.
In her later years, she embraced aging with the same principles. Having survived WWII, Audrey knew that getting older was a privilege, “I decided ages ago to like life unconditionally. I’ve never expected life to do anything special for me, yet I’ve accomplished more than I ever hoped for.” When she was asked to do interviews or engagements in her 50s and 60s she would do her own hair and makeup, “for myself, I never put on makeup base, never powder. I just make up my eyes, and then in the winter, if I’m feeling a bit green, I’ll use a little rouge. That’s it.” Although, we may remember Audrey as the epitome of beauty and a fashion icon, for Audrey, attractiveness was about one’s character. It was an extension of one’s individuality and an expression of creativity. True beauty wasn’t defined by one’s outer appearance but by one’s humility, grace, and kindness. In her final years, she divided her time between her family and her philanthropy. As her son Luca Dotti noted, “She was actually very happy about growing older because it meant more time for herself, more time for her family, and separation from the frenzy of youth and beauty that is Hollywood.”
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