Being Audrey Hepburn Read online

  “What are you having?” I asked, grabbing a couple of napkins from the veneer antique sideboard.

  “Personally, I think a little rosé champagne couldn’t hurt,” she said. She brought in two flutes of pink bubbly. “Everybody says wine is medicinal, and drinking champagne is like sipping starlight.” Her mischievous grin widened, and she whispered, “I want you to have some of the good stuff.” We clinked glasses, and the bubbles went right up my nose. And that’s when my phone buzzed.

  There was a text: “SOS @ the Met MMB☺”

  It was Jess. She was working late at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that week. They were always giving her impossible projects to finish by dawn, like cataloging dirty and dusty dioramas or making hundreds of labels for every single jar, lid, bowl and floral collar that ever existed in the pharaoh’s funeral tomb. She impressed them every time, but sometimes she was desperate for help or she’d never get out of there. I don’t know how she did it—it was kind of like the worst middle school project ever times a thousand, so not my thing. Lately, Jess had resorted to bribery to get me to come.

  I quickly texted her back that I was with Nan.

  “Hug Nan for me !! But you need to see this !!”

  “Is everything okay?” Nan asked.

  “Jess says hi,” I told Nan, and she blew back a kiss. “Uh, Nan…,” I began.

  “Go! Have fun with your friend in the city,” she said. She was smiling, waving me to leave and picking up the plates before I could say another word.

  “Another hug?”

  “Certainly, dear.” I didn’t know who was squeezing tighter, Nan or me.

  Jess was texting me on the way out the door to hurry up.

  “What’s up ?!” I typed as a pleasant champagne buzz kicked in.

  “U won’t believe it !! ☺”

  5

  The forty-five-minute train ride was boring. I searched my phone for texts I hadn’t answered. I texted everyone and their dog, but no one texted back.

  Mom called, but I didn’t pick up. I just couldn’t deal with her tonight. I tried to slyly read the story on the back pages of the People magazine the lady directly across from me held in front of her. Something about Kim Kardashian on a shopping spree in Beijing. But the lady kept shifting, so it was pretty hard to keep my place.

  As she turned the page, she caught me leaning forward and gave me the stink-eye, like I was stealing her gossip news. Everyone around me silently turned and glared at me. I shrugged “sorry,” and they went back to what they were doing.

  I stared mindlessly out the window at the southern view of highways and wires while the train sped its way to the city. I noticed another dirty scowl from the lady with the People magazine and zoned out. What was she so cranky about?

  * * *

  I opened my eyes, surprised I was at Penn Station. I hated falling asleep on the train and waking to find everyone gone and me just sitting there. Crap.

  Bumping my way through the closing doors, I sprinted up the stairs to catch the bus to the Met. I checked the time on my phone. I could still make it by eight.

  I got off the bus and made my way toward the employee entrance of the Met on the left side of the building.

  “Here !!” I texted, but rounding the corner at a sprint, I slammed into a wall of people crowding the sidewalk in front me, so I stepped out into the street. I heard a screech and turned to see a limo skidding to a stop behind me. I jumped.

  “Sorry,” I said. The limo driver drove by, yelling at me. A real New Yorker would have flipped him the bird. There was a flash of light, and I was startled as cameras flashed everywhere around me. I was wearing my favorite jeans and a plaid boyfriend shirt from American Eagle because I don’t have one, so I knew I wasn’t the focus of their attention.

  Through the blinding flashes, an unbelievable vision of wealth and fashion rose up before me. A perfect Bergdorf-blonde trust-fund baby, wearing a short gold shift dress with a plunging neckline and puff sleeves, posed for the cameras. Was she wearing Roberto Cavalli or even Christian Siriano? No matter, the Met was having a huge gala, and I was standing smack in the middle of a photo op. The perfect blonde was followed by a Tory Burch sequin tunic dress on a girl with the skinniest legs and a six-hundred-dollar haircut. To the right of me, a drop-dead-gorgeous guy rose out of a nearby limo.

  He flashed a megawatt smile with this amused twist like he was laughing at everybody for admiring him. He spun around to find someone and turned to look at—me. I couldn’t pull myself away. My heart slowed, thumping louder and louder. Time seemed to shift into slo-mo. He seemed oddly alone. I was so close, I could see that his eyes were hazel green with gold flecks. He was at least six feet tall, and his dinner jacket fit him as if he were an Emporio Armani model or, better, an underwear model for Abercrombie. I closed my eyes and imagined him in his underwear. When I opened them again, I swear he was still staring right at me.

  A long pale leg, and one spectacular stiletto (Louboutin, judging by the red on the bottom) stepped out of the limo, followed by a low-cut V-shaped formal dress exposing almost every part of a lithe, tan young body. Was she wearing Versace? Mr. Underwear-Man reached down and helped her out of the car. It was Dahlia Rothenberg, the princess of all celebutantes, totally famous mostly because she was skinny, blond, notoriously promiscuous, and due to inherit half the real estate in Manhattan.

  The cameras went crazy as she posed with Mr. Underwear-Man, then alone. God, I couldn’t stop staring at her body. I bet she never ate. Linking her arm in his, they sauntered down the red carpet, smiling and chatting as they moved toward the museum entrance with the other young fashionistas. Dahlia made her way up the museum steps in those sky-high heels with elegant, tiny steps. If it were me, I’d have tripped and fallen already.

  I said a little prayer that Mr. Underwear-Man would look back at me. Of course, he didn’t. He disappeared inside the museum doors. Turning to leave, I found myself blinded by a bright light that beamed steadily in my eyes. It was the light from a camera crew. A scruffy, unassuming guy held the camera as a slick Ryan Seacrest type in a tux with a microphone searched for people to interview. The cameraman noticed me shielding my eyes and moved the light away, and I could see again. He shrugged an apology, and I nodded thanks.

  Ohmygod—Tabitha Eden stepped out of another car! Yes, the Princess of Pop, the fave of teenyboppers everywhere. And despite my being way older than her audience, I LOVED HER! She was wearing a supershort silver dress. Completely awesome, by the way. She was totally going to make FabSugar’s best dressed. And she managed to get out of the car looking like the star that she was without pulling a Britney.

  Every minute I kept watching made me feel like a lowly tourist in a country of fabulousness, but I couldn’t tear myself away. The women were stunning, and the men were all graceful and handsome. I couldn’t imagine being with people like that. I personally didn’t know any boys who didn’t burp the alphabet. Maybe I could track down my father and ask him to set me up with a million-dollar trust fund, a good trick considering he’d never paid child support. Besides, money alone wasn’t enough to hang with this crowd.

  Limousines, personal shoppers, and weekends in the Hamptons—these kids were just so not like me with their thousand-dollar handbags, designer drugs, and life options. It was sick—just another club that I’d never get into, waiting at the ropes as usual. They had all the wealth and glamour in a world where a lot of people I knew were forced to choose between groceries and rent, where kids graduated college with crippling student loans and no job prospects, and where my greatest opportunity in life was to be a nurse-practitioner. I felt like a troll. You’d never know my world existed while gazing at these beautiful and carefree creatures.

  I glanced at my watch and realized I had been standing there for over ten minutes. Jess was probably annoyed already waiting at the back door, but I was sort of stuck. There was no direct route to the other side of the building, which meant I had to either cross the red carpet (um,
yeah, that would go over well) or go back across the street to get to the other side.

  Being a good girl, I opted for the street and made my way up Fifth Avenue. Another limo (or was it the same guy out of spite?) nearly clipped me as I stepped off the sidewalk. Walking halfway up the block, I crossed back to the museum.

  “Where r u ?!” Jess texted

  Running across the street, I couldn’t stop thinking about the gowns, the shoes, and Mr. Underwear-Man’s golden-green eyes. As if I’d ever go to a party like that.

  At the door, Jess gave me a quick hug. She looked her usual cool—short Halle Berry hair dyed dark blue tucked behind her ear with a pencil and her museum key card hanging around her neck. She wore five or six chunky necklaces, one made of dozens of weird old antique buttons and a black Ramones T-shirt over a tiered skirt with a sort of iridescent blue lining. It must have been one of her own creations—it was way too cool to be off the rack in our price range.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “You know, the paparazzi were blocking my entrance as usual,” I said.

  Jess laughed. “Happens to me all the time, dahling.”

  “What’s going on here tonight?” I asked, images of Mr. Underwear-Man on the museum steps wistfully replaying in my mind.

  “It’s the Millennial Social Register Gala, sorta like prom for Park Avenue Princesses and Moguls in Training with a few pop stars thrown in to make things interesting,” Jess said. “Got to admit, it is one hell of a fashion show.”

  As we walked through the back entrance, Joe, the security guard, buzzed us in as Jess nodded and I waved. Following Jess down a series of hallways and up the stairs to the large, very cold room where she worked, I wished I’d brought my hoodie. Even though it was summer, I was shivering. Jess said that the reason it was so effin’ freezing in there all the time was that it helped preserve the artifacts. After ten or twenty minutes, I felt like a frozen turkey—so I guess it worked.

  The long metal tables were always covered with whatever project Jess had been tasked with. That night, fragments of an Egyptian sculpture—hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of noses, ears, faces—were everywhere. Jess was wearing a pair of blue nitrile gloves and threw some my way.

  “Jeez, did a tourist go nuts and smash up one of the pharaoh statues?” I asked, putting on the gloves.

  “Yeah, didn’t you hear?” Jess asked. “It was a big deal—three-thousand years ago.” She chuckled.

  “Ha, sorry, I’m so clueless.”

  “This is what’s left of Queen Hatshepsut, the great female pharaoh who ruled Egypt during Dynasty Eighteen, approximately 1473 to 1458 B.C. Her son did it. Thutmose the Third. He must have been a total dick. When she died, he destroyed all the images of his mom in existence. Thankfully he missed a few. These are the smashed pieces of the funerary temple.”

  “Maybe he was pissed about that name … Thutmose—that had to really suck in middle school.”

  “For sure. But, lucky me, I get to bar code and enter each of these little fragments into the collection management system. Fun, huh? And you get to help.”

  “This will make for a thrilling night,” I said. “Why do I let you rope me into this drudgery?”

  “I guess you must like me,” she answered and gave me a goofy grin.

  “Hey, didn’t you say there was something I had to see?”

  “Oh yeah, I have a little surprise for you.” With a mischievous look, Jess lifted up a large box from under the table.

  “Apparently it was recently logged in on loan from Hubert de Givenchy’s private archive, no less,” she said. “I came across it in my last plunge into the frozen depths of the Met’s Costume Institute archives. I’ll have to put it back right away.”

  She gently opened the box and pulled back the paper. I felt my breath catch short as I realized what was inside.

  I could hardly believe it.

  6

  “It’s going to be fine,” I said, sliding my arms through the holes above my head. My heart was thumping so hard it felt like it might just pop out of my chest.

  “Why didn’t I know I had asthma until now?” Jess asked, dropping down onto one of the swivel work chairs. “I’m so stressed I can’t breathe.”

  “You’ll live,” I said as I carefully avoided sticking my hands through the neck opening.

  Being a total Audrey fanatic, I knew from endless Internet searches that this was the dress that almost no one in the history of the world besides Hubert de Givenchy had seen and only one person had ever tried on—Audrey Hepburn. That’s because the actual dress Audrey wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s didn’t exist. It was covertly destroyed under the supervision of the notoriously controlling Queen of Hollywood Costume and Wardrobe, Edith Head, and Audrey herself, at least that’s what every fan site on the Internet said. Edith Head was kind of the Wicked Witch of the West when it came to Audrey’s wardrobe.

  But the dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s wasn’t the dress Givenchy created for her anyway. Givenchy’s original, which had a slit along the left leg and a slightly shorter length, was even more exquisite and dazzling than the one in the movie. Givenchy designed the entire ensemble, adding the perfect accessories to match the gown: a bundle of pearls, a foot-long cigarette holder, and opera gloves. Hard to believe, but in those days Hollywood was prudish about showing a little leg—long before Angelina Jolie’s gams came peaking out of her dress at the Oscars. Even though Holly was supposed to be an escort kind of call girl, the studio didn’t want her to look like one.

  Shimmying the dress over my hips, I was actually thankful, for once, that I didn’t have any. To think … I had to be the only person to try it on since Audrey Hepburn.

  It’s a bit of a mystery, but most people assumed that the dress Audrey wore in the opening scenes of the movie was a Givenchy. In fact, the dress was a phony redesigned by Edith Head. The dress I was pulling on, with its weighted hem and opening at the leg, was one of three versions in existence that were all Givenchy originals. Audrey likely wore the hand-stitched version when she was fitted by Givenchy, but a photograph of her wearing the dress has never surfaced.

  Edith Head’s version did away with the open leg and lengthened and tightened the bottom to deemphasize how “revealing” it was. That’s why Audrey had to take such tiny Geisha girl steps, almost waddling to the windows at Tiffany’s.

  It seemed like there was some kind of agreement between Paramount and Audrey that Edith would destroy the two phony dresses she had made after filming, perhaps to save Givenchy the embarrassment of the bogus dresses floating around that were more sedate and conventional than his original design. It’s believed that they were taken apart and burned at the Western Costume Company’s cavernous warehouses in Hollywood.

  The swoon-worthy dress was sliding down my back, and the black lining felt incredibly smooth against my skin, more like a silk hug than a dress.

  Of the three dresses Givenchy created that still existed—all with the exposed hip-length slit down the leg—one, a machine-stitched version, was donated to the Madrid Museum of Costume and is permanently exhibited there. Another was sold at a Christie’s auction to an anonymous telephone bidder. That anonymous bidder is suspected to be none other than Posh Spice, who is an Audrey fanatic like me, but with money. They say she has an Audrey room in “Beckingham Palace” that she shares with her soccer hubby. I cringed to think what Audrey would have thought of her dress sitting in a Spice Girl’s mansion.

  Lastly there was the Audrey-fitted original hand-stitched dress, which was the one I had just slipped on.

  “Well, instead of sitting there—you could help?” I said, trying to adjust the shoulders.

  “Sure, why shouldn’t I make it easier for you to get me fired?” Jess snapped off her blue gloves, stood up, and helped pull the dress down. Turning the hem, she had a surprised expression on her face. “Dude, this hand stitching is awesome.”

  When she gently drew the zipper up, a tiny gasp escap
ed her lips.

  “Ohmygod, Lisbeth, this dress fits like it was made for you.” The gown settled perfectly around my hips with a snugness and a lift I had never felt before.

  My cheeks flushed with excitement as I searched for a mirror. Spotting one in the corner, I lifted up the dress, feeling the weights that Givenchy had strategically placed in the hem to ensure the fabric fell perfectly on Audrey’s body.

  “You need shoes,” Jess said.

  As she rummaged through her giant bag I pulled on the long black gloves.

  “How about these?” she asked, holding up a pair of black patent stilettos like she’d just caught a pop fly as it was about to go over the left field fence.

  “Ooh! Gimme!” I said, wondering why Jess would keep a pair of these CFM pumps in her bag.

  Jess steadied me as I slipped into the heels. I didn’t want to sit down for fear I’d wrinkle the dress, imagining Jess trying to explain to the curator how the most famous dress in the history of all dresses ended up with my ass creases.

  Jess’s shoes were too big (I wear an 8½, Jess wears a 10), but they were for looks, not for dancing, so I didn’t really care. I shuffled the rest of the way to the mirror like a kindergartner in her mother’s shoes, my heart floating in anticipation.

  I was already hyperventilating when I saw myself for the first time. I seemed long and lean and elegant, and with Jess’s shoes, even the length was perfect. It just skimmed the patent shoe—an inch or so off the floor, and the fabric revealed just a tiny bit of my ankle. I could hardly believe my eyes. The black dress was perfection.

  “You must be the best friend ever.” I glanced back at Jess. I’d never seen such a wide-eyed expression like that in her eyes before.

  “I can’t believe how perfect you look!” A glaze had come over her eyes, as if she were mesmerized by a hypnotic illusion. “Wait! One more thing!” she said and ran out of the room.