In Honor of Audrey Hepburn’s Birthday, See 23 Rare Photographs From the Condé Nast Archives

Andrews originated the role on Broadway, winning over hearts and critics in the process. So, when Hepburn was cast in My Fair Lady’s feature film adaptation, it was something of a Hollywood scandal. The press all too happily pitted the two thespians against each other; Hepburn, once perceived as the wide-eyed gamine with an elegance beyond her years, was now framed as wrestling the role out of Andrews’s untrained hands (the latter hadn’t yet made her big-screen debut). But what really sent reporters into a tizzy? The fact that while Andrews possessed an incredible voice, Hepburn’s heady talents stopped just short of singing. 

As such, when Vogue asked Beaton to photograph Hepburn in a selection of looks that would inform his confections for the film, he had his work cut out for him…or did he? Seen here as a little head peeking out of a mille-feuille of organza, or as a fashion plate in a Poiret-esque ensemble cinched below the hips, Hepburn steps into the role splendidly. (The artist and muse were already well-acquainted: Beaton had been photographing Hepburn for over a decade by the early 1960s.) 

The film’s circa-1912 setting is one in which hats were an essential accessory; in each of the dozen photos snapped by Beaton, a hat of his own creation is on display. “He makes you look the way you have always wanted to look,” Hepburn told Vogue of Beaton. “I adore the hats; they seem to be always in motion…the dress becomes a stem to the hat. Cecil Beaton’s dresses are the sculpted statue—like Pygmalion’s.”