Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), wearing the dress auctioned at Christie's today.
Fashion is all about context. A woman in a frumpy floral dress, brown shoes and swinging about an oversized leather bag is working a Mitford look, even if she actually looks like a teacher from Grange Hill, circa late 80s.
Meanwhile a young man in a button down shirt, light trousers and jumper affixed about his neck is going for Burberry's Merchant Ivory look, although he might well be Nigel Havers in his natural garb. You might want to make that distinction before passing comment.
So when considering who should buy the Givenchy dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's - auctioned at Christie's today and expected to fetch up to £70,000 - one needs to consider the context in which it was worn. Yes, yes, this dress has been cited as that much vaunted concept - "fashion inspiration" - by style aspirants, and, yes, it is a very pretty dress. But I feel that the context in which it was worn has been forgotten.
We see Holly wearing it as she emerges from a taxi at the break of dawn, chewing on a takeaway croissant and gazing dumbly in the Tiffany's window. In short, she hasn't been home from the night before, the filthy stop-out, and has no doubt fled from wherever she did lay her head last night, grabbed some necessary carbs to soak up the toxins and shame and is now wandering the streets lost in a fug of self-loathing.
It is an often forgotten fact, not least because the movie attempted to gloss it over, that in the book Holly is quite clearly some kind of working lady in the old, euphemistic sense of the term. So let's get this straight again - a dress worn by an escort girl for a night out.
Well, lots of people come to mind about who should wear the dress in the sense they are famous for no other reason than for whom they sleep with, none of whom shall libellously be mentioned here. But just for sheer contrast value, here are a few people I'd quite like to see in it.
Ann Widdecombe, for example, has been looking increasingly hot since her new blond ambition makeover. Meanwhile Kirsty Wark is always fond of getting out a posh frock and I reckon this one would work a treat when discussing the fine semantic points of Borat with Rod Liddle on Newsnight Review.
Ultimately, though, the obvious choice is the morally lax female icon of today. Yes, it's Vicky Pollard we're talking. Admittedly, the dress will have to be taken out a bit, perhaps, but fashion, as Hubert Givenchy (possibly) said at some point, must move with the times.
