Dress in Detail: the "Sabrina" Party Dress

            I recently watched Sabrina for the first time and fell in love with the costumes (which is easy to do when they're designed by Edith Head and worn by Audrey Hepburn). The most famous gown from the film is the one I'm analyzing for this article - my fourth Dress in Detail! If you haven't read my others, you can check out the Scarlett O'Hara dress, the "I Don't Care" dress, and the "Never Gonna Dance" dress here!


            Audrey Hepburn is well-known for her status as a fashion icon. She regularly worked with European fashion houses, and her stardom helped launch some of these designers to the same level of fame. Audrey's tendency to favor these expensive foreign designers sometimes caused friction with her costume designers, which is exactly what happened on the set of Sabrina. 
            Edith Head was the official costume designer, but many of Audrey's outfits in the film were hand-selected by the actress in Paris.  Audrey was a fan of Hubert de Givenchy's work and hoped that he would be able to make her character, Sabrina, appear authentically Parisian. As the story goes, the young designer Givenchy was told that a "Miss Hepburn" was coming to visit his studio and was stunned, assuming it was Hollywood legend Katharine Hepburn. When the unknown Audrey came in, he was surprised but allowed her to choose a few designs from his collection to wear in Sabrina. After this film, the Givenchy-Audrey Hepburn partnership would lead to other legendary fashion-filled movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's. Edith Head was not too happy about losing the chance to design all of Audrey's outfits, especially after the Sabrina party dress went down in fashion history as one of cinema's most iconic outfits.
            The dress itself consists of a white bodice, on top of which is a slim white pencil skirt and billowing overskirt. The skirt and bodice are embroidered with black thread and jet beads, and the skirts have a black organza ruffle lining the hem. The dress became part of Debbie Reynolds' legendary collection of movie memorabilia, and was sold at auction in 2017 for around $170,000! Somewhere out there is a very lucky fashion fan who now owns the Sabrina party dress.
            Sabrina itself is a charming movie very much similar in plot to "The Summer I Turned Pretty," for fellow fans of that show. It is also a lovely fashion retrospective for anyone who loves Edith Head or Givenchy, or really any film fashion of the 1950s. See if you can spot the two other Givenchy looks in the film - Sabrina's gray two-piece train suit and her black silk cocktail dress with bows at the neckline.
            I hope you enjoyed this latest Dress in Detail! If you have any requests, leave them in the comments - I'm always looking for new costumes to analyze. Until next time!

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