Why Audrey Hepburn’s 3 Wedding Dresses Continue to Blaze a Trail in Fashion

Along with her enduring legacies in film and style, Audrey Hepburn’s wedding dresses continue to influence sartorial perspectives and individual expression. Her cultural impact can also be traced to her on- and off-screen bridal style, most famously to the designs she wore over a 40-year friendship and collaboration with Hubert de Givenchy. At the forefront and creation of everlasting fashion trends, Hepburn even inspired the contemporary bridal fashion world to embrace the black-and-white wedding dress after she debuted a strapless embroidered organza Givenchy gown during a stunning party scene in 1954’s Sabrina.

“She is what people mean when they say they want to look ‘classic and timeless,’ or ‘elegant but no fuss,’” says Lily Kaizer, owner of luxury vintage wedding-dress salon Happy Isles. 

The “Lucky” (Almost) Wedding Dress

While filming 1953’s Roman Holiday, 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 design her wedding dress.

Elegant and pared-down, Hepburn’s first wedding dress offered a glimpse into a fashion icon’s definitive perspective: demure boatneck, long sleeves, and a playful high-low hemline. Ultimately, she called off the nuptials and asked the sisters to donate the design. “[I want the dress] to be worn by another girl for her wedding, perhaps someone who couldn’t ever afford a dress like mine—the most beautiful, poor Italian girl you can find,” the future UNICEF ambassador reportedly said. 

The couturiers found a recipient, Amiable Altobella, and invited her to their Rome atelier for alterations. “The whole experience must have been incredible for [Altobella and her fiancé],” says Kerry Taylor, founder of London-based Kerry Taylor Auctions, of the couple’s visit from the city of Latina. 

“They had three daughters and five grandchildren. Amiable said, ‘I’ve had a happy marriage, so the dress brought me luck’ and that was very much the feeling when the dress was handed over,” says Taylor, who auctioned the dress in 2009 for $23,000. “The whole family felt such pride at having had something so special and so unique.”

The Balmain Wedding Dress

After a whirlwind romance, Hepburn married American actor Mel Ferrer on September 25, 1954, in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.