The Original Brand Ambassadors

Before Insta-influencers fronted brand campaigns, designers had their one true muse. A bond that was intimate and oftentimes unexplainable. This is the story of how Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn’s relationship became the gold standard in the fashion industry

- Vanessa Friedman

Before there were ‘faces’; before there were ‘brand ambassadors’; before there was E!’s Live From the Red Carpet; before ‘American Gigolo’ and Armani (before Cher and Bob Mackie, or Alessandro Michele and Jared Leto); before there were Los Angeles offices and celebrity liaisons for every fashion brand; before there were influencers, there were Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn.

The original designer and his actress muse, Givenchy and Hepburn defined a relationship that has become the gold standard of almost every brand. And although almost every obituary and headline since the news of Givenchy’s death in March of this year, at age 91, has referenced the relationship as core to his career, its impact went far beyond what it meant for the individuals involved. Arguably, on the model of their 40-year relationship, an entire fashion/Hollywood industrial complex has been built. The question for me is whether either of them would necessarily recognise the connection, as deformed and industrialised as it has become.

It’s worth reminding ourselves, in the age of what increasingly seems like celebrities-for-hire — when dresses worn by one designer to enter an award ceremony get changed to dresses worn by another designer for the after-party and famous names profess undying devotion to a brand one season and then pop up in the ads of another brand the next — that once upon a time this was about two people who found in each other kindred spirits and worked together to craft two images: that of a woman and the man who dressed her.

And that once ‘muse’ when applied to fashion and artist, was interpreted in the classical Greek sense of the word, as opposed to as inspiration for hire, or for public pitching.