Audrey Hepburn
The pearls everyone remembers belonged to a character. The sunglasses were genuinely hers.
The signature: Oversized sunglasses — and a famous necklace that was not hers
This page exists partly to make a distinction that almost every "get the look" article gets wrong. The multi-strand pearl choker and tiara that people picture when they think of Audrey Hepburn is Holly Golightly's costume from Breakfast at Tiffany's — a character's jewellery, designed for a role, in a film about someone constructing a persona. Treating it as Hepburn's personal style is a category error, and a slightly funny one given the plot.
What was genuinely and consistently hers, on and off screen across decades, was eyewear. She wore large frames — the pair in that film were by Oliver Goldsmith — and she kept wearing large frames long after the film, in private life, in a way that reads as preference rather than costume.
Her actual personal register was closer to restraint than to the opulence the posters suggest: simple earrings, a scarf, flats, and a strong preference for a small repeated wardrobe. The gap between the character's accessories and the woman's is one of the clearest examples anywhere of how film costume becomes mistaken for personal style.
Worth knowing if you have ever tried the pearls-and-tiara version and felt it was wearing you. It was designed to.
What transfers
Separate the costume from the person before copying either. A great deal of "iconic style" is production design — chosen by someone else, for a character, to be legible from thirty feet. The things a person kept wearing when nobody was filming are the ones worth borrowing.
Sources
- Classic Critics Corner — Audrey Hepburn sunglasses (read Aug 16, 2026)
- A Fashion Blog — What jewelry did Audrey Hepburn wear? (read Aug 16, 2026)
