Fashion icon Audrey Hepburn didn't need to look for the most expensive dress to dazzle the day she won her first Oscar for Best Actress in 1954.
Audrey Hepburn's simple but elegant lace dress, with a small belt and boat neckline, was an adaptation of the one that costume designer Edith Head had designed for the last scene of Roman Holiday, a film for which she won the award.
Of course, there was also controversy, since the adaptation was not finished by the Head herself but by Hubert de Givenchy, whom Hepburn had met in a Paris boutique a year earlier. In addition, after those Oscars, the actress demanded that it was no longer Head, but Givenchy who was in charge of her wardrobe in her next films, and it was like that for the next seven years.
The difference with today? Audrey Hepburn never received money from the firm (although she did receive clothes in exchange) for wearing her designs on the red carpet.
Sadly, while most credited Edith Head (who was also just as well known as a name brand designer) at the time, many today refer to the dress as a Givenchy signature dress.
Although Hepburn did what no actress has ever done, of taking a dress she had already worn (and quite conspicuously) and modifying it without spending thousands of dollars on a new one, I think her "feat" was overshadowed by falling into the temptation to simply put a famous name on the label.
The irony is that, according to her mother, she always referred to that outfit as "her lucky dress of hers" (and it is not surprising, since wearing it she won her only Oscar as an actress). throughout her career).
Likewise, it has gone down in history as one of her most iconic outfits, proving that it does not necessarily require the most expensive dress or the most luxurious fabric to stand out; Sometimes, as Coco Chanel said, "Simplicity is the key to true elegance."
