Keep it light. We believe dating is the most Audrey-esque experience you can have. For starters, look at your life through the prism of Audrey Hepburn and think of all the wonderful adventures you'll have - zipping through Rome on the back of a Vespa, browsing through Tiffany's with that handsome writer, going from being a dowdy Village bookworm to the toast of Paris (well, it could happen). In your Audrey Dating World, keep your options open - you never know what might happen next.
For this reason (like AH), we love dating, and - at least until you have a ring on your finger - advocate dating a bunch of people in your singlehood. In our opinion, dating is the time to be most like Audrey - have fun! Be compelling! Keep your eyes peeled for your own handsome costar.
Audrey met her first serious beau, James Hanson, in the summer of 1950, after she had finished The Lavender Hill Mob, a comedy where she made a minor appearance - one sentence long - with Alec Guinness. She is Chiquita, in an airport lounge, where Guinness calls her over and hands her a wad of bills: "Oh, but how sweet of you," she coos, and gives him a thank-you kiss on the forehead.
Hepburn and Hanson immediately hit it off. Audrey was 22. Jimmy was 28, six-feet-four, and the multimillionaire scion of a Yorkshire trucking industry company. He had served heroically in WWII (at the age of 17), from 1939 to its end, with the Duke of Wellington's regiment in North Africa, Italy and Greece. Back safely from the war, he dressed impeccably, owned his own plane, and frequented the best nightspots of London and New York. He loved beautiful women, in particular, actresses. Most recently, he had been seen about town with Jean Simmons, but that was quickly forgotten once Audrey entered the picture.
As Hanson recalled, "We met at a cocktail party in Mayfair at Les Ambassadeurs, a very popular place, and we were attracted to each other right away. I invited her for lunch next day, and we soon fell in love, became engaged a few months later. She was a one-man woman, and it was a relationship of that kind. We became extremely good friends. Everybody saw in her this wonderful life and brightness and terrific strength of character. She was a very strong young woman who clearly had the determination she was going to need in order to achieve what she did. She had done a couple of small parts in movies, and her career was just about to blossom. There was no doubt about that by anybody who saw her."
Audrey as dating coach. "Discretion is the better part of valor," said Shakespeare's Falstaff. In this regard, take the numero uno Love Lesson from Audrey and keep your personal affairs (largely) to yourself. We're not saying don't have a girly lunch with Connie Wald (one of Audrey's best friends) out by the pool. We're just saying don't go on Oprah Winfrey and jump up and down on the couch the next time you fall in love.
Brooke Astor, herself and Audrey-esque paragon of virtue and coolness, never spoke about that sort of thing. "How many loves have you had?" someone had the temerity to ask her in her later years. And she had the equal temerity not to answer. She would never say, she responded cheerfully, "that's how I count myself to sleep."
Don't reveal your hand. A further corollary of this is: "No daylight on magic" (as Cecil Beaton so famously advised the royal family - a lesson they have since so famously forgotten). As an actress, as a European brought up in a "nice" (albeit fractured) home, as an essentially private person, Audrey knew that there was no reason to let everyone see the workings behind the grace. Huber de Givenchy, one of her closest friends, described her as "shy...if she had worries she would not show them."
In this era of Barbara Walters confessional and People magazine tell-all, discretion is such a rarity that a little mystery goes a long way.
For this reason (like AH), we love dating, and - at least until you have a ring on your finger - advocate dating a bunch of people in your singlehood. In our opinion, dating is the time to be most like Audrey - have fun! Be compelling! Keep your eyes peeled for your own handsome costar.
Audrey met her first serious beau, James Hanson, in the summer of 1950, after she had finished The Lavender Hill Mob, a comedy where she made a minor appearance - one sentence long - with Alec Guinness. She is Chiquita, in an airport lounge, where Guinness calls her over and hands her a wad of bills: "Oh, but how sweet of you," she coos, and gives him a thank-you kiss on the forehead.
Hepburn and Hanson immediately hit it off. Audrey was 22. Jimmy was 28, six-feet-four, and the multimillionaire scion of a Yorkshire trucking industry company. He had served heroically in WWII (at the age of 17), from 1939 to its end, with the Duke of Wellington's regiment in North Africa, Italy and Greece. Back safely from the war, he dressed impeccably, owned his own plane, and frequented the best nightspots of London and New York. He loved beautiful women, in particular, actresses. Most recently, he had been seen about town with Jean Simmons, but that was quickly forgotten once Audrey entered the picture.
As Hanson recalled, "We met at a cocktail party in Mayfair at Les Ambassadeurs, a very popular place, and we were attracted to each other right away. I invited her for lunch next day, and we soon fell in love, became engaged a few months later. She was a one-man woman, and it was a relationship of that kind. We became extremely good friends. Everybody saw in her this wonderful life and brightness and terrific strength of character. She was a very strong young woman who clearly had the determination she was going to need in order to achieve what she did. She had done a couple of small parts in movies, and her career was just about to blossom. There was no doubt about that by anybody who saw her."
Audrey as dating coach. "Discretion is the better part of valor," said Shakespeare's Falstaff. In this regard, take the numero uno Love Lesson from Audrey and keep your personal affairs (largely) to yourself. We're not saying don't have a girly lunch with Connie Wald (one of Audrey's best friends) out by the pool. We're just saying don't go on Oprah Winfrey and jump up and down on the couch the next time you fall in love.
Brooke Astor, herself and Audrey-esque paragon of virtue and coolness, never spoke about that sort of thing. "How many loves have you had?" someone had the temerity to ask her in her later years. And she had the equal temerity not to answer. She would never say, she responded cheerfully, "that's how I count myself to sleep."
Don't reveal your hand. A further corollary of this is: "No daylight on magic" (as Cecil Beaton so famously advised the royal family - a lesson they have since so famously forgotten). As an actress, as a European brought up in a "nice" (albeit fractured) home, as an essentially private person, Audrey knew that there was no reason to let everyone see the workings behind the grace. Huber de Givenchy, one of her closest friends, described her as "shy...if she had worries she would not show them."
In this era of Barbara Walters confessional and People magazine tell-all, discretion is such a rarity that a little mystery goes a long way.
**all information comes from the book: What Would Audrey Do by Pamela Keogh
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