Hepburn dress for sale

Hadley Freeman,
deputy fashion editor
The Guardian

Little iconic black dress... Audrey Hepburn wearing the Givenchy dress in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Photograph: Paramount Pictures/Getty

The dress that has inspired more fashion designers, more high street copies and more celebrities in search of fashion credibility than any other is to go on sale at Christie's in December.

The little black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's is being put up for auction by its current owner, Dominique Lapierre, on behalf of the charity City of Joy Aid, which raises money for India's poor.

The dress is expected to attract bids of up to £70,000. None of the cinema's other fashion moments has proven as influential as the opening scene of the 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's novel. Hepburn wanders down an empty Fifth Avenue, gazing in the window of the eponymous jewellery store, and chomps down a croissant, despite her famously thin figure.

The combination of Hepburn's looks, the simplicity of the dress, by Hubert de Givenchy, the pearls draped down her back and the romanticism of Manhattan combined to make this one of the most iconic images from the film world.

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