Breakfast at National Portrait Gallery, with Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn is, probably, one of the most recognizable people in the world. Who didn’t see her in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or in “Sabrina”? Or which fashionista doesn’t think at Audrey as the muse for the legendary house of Givenchy?

Featuring many rarely seen images, including works by famed photographers such as Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, the exhibit “Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon” will chart Hepburn’s early life in London, to the pinnacle of her international stardom, to her later philanthropic work. The exhibition was compiled with the help of Hepburn’s sons, Luca Dotti and Sean Hepburn Ferrer, who have a huge archive of photos of their mother. Held at National Portrait Gallery, London, from 2nd of Julay to 18th of October 2015, it includes a selection of more than seventy images will define Hepburn’s iconography, including classic and some quite unknown pictures from leading twentieth-century photographers such as Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Terry O’Neill, Norman Parkinson and Irving Penn. Not to miss: the Penn’s 1951 portrait for Vogue: a close-up shot of Hepburn in black, her face lit up in a smile, a perfect beauty expression, and the shooting for Norman Parkinson with Audrey in a pink Givenchy dress surrounded by flowers. Alongside these, an array of vintage magazine covers, panning 45 years, film stills, and extraordinary archival material.

(from left to right) 
Audrey Hepburn photographed wearing Givenchy by Norman Parkinson, 1955 © Norman Parkinson Ltd/Courtesy Norman Parkinson Archive
Audrey Hepburn dressed in Givenchy with sunglasses by Oliver Goldsmith by Douglas Kirkland, 1966 © Iconic Images/Douglas Kirkland

Supported by Midge and Simon Palley / With support from the Bernard Lee Schwartz Foundation and the Audrey Hepburn Exhibition Supporters Group / Organised with support from the Audrey Hepburn Estate / Luca Dotti & Sean Hepburn Ferrer