Hepburn’s ‘Tiffany’s’ Dress Lands Record Sum

By Rich Drees

The black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany's as it appears in Christie's auction catalog.

     December 5, 2006- The sleeveless black designer dress Audrey Hepburn memorably wore in the opening moments of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) has fetched close to $1 million at auction at London’s famed Christie’s auction house earlier today during an auction of film memorabilia. More than 250 items ranging from production sketches from early Disney animated features to props from spy thrillers like The Ipcress File (1965) and the James Bond series.

     According to the auction house’s website, the $920,000 (£467,200) final bid for the dress is a world record for a dress made for a film. The amount is more six time the amount the dress was expected to bring. The dress was won by an anonymous phone bidder.

     A Walther PPK pistol used by Sean Connery in 1962’s Dr. No went under the hammer for $89,000 while the tacky reindeer-adorned sweater worn by Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) went for approximately $2,100.

     Other items auctioned include an initialed hip flask owned by Errol Flynn, original costume sketches for Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi, a selection of guns from the James Bond films and a Quidditch World Cup program prop from Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005).

     Adorned in the black dress with a pearl necklace and evening gloves, Hepburn’s eccentric Manhattan socialite Holly Golightly stepped out of a cab to gaze at the window displays at the Fifth Avenue storefront of jeweler Tiffany & Co. in a moment that became one of the most iconic in cinema history.

     The dress was one of three identical dresses from Italian designer Hubert de Givenchy, who created high fashion wardrobes for Hepburn for several films including Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957) and Charade (1963). Givenchy donated the dress to Dominic Lapierre, who was selling the dress on behalf of the City of Joy Aid, a charity for poor Indian children. One copy of the dress resides in Givenchy’s Paris archives while the third is on display at the Museum of Costume in Madrid, Spain.

     “There are tears in my eyes,” stated Lapierre in a statement on Christie’s website. “I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools.”