Belgian-born Audrey Hepburn had three wedding dresses in her lifetime, yet she only ever wore two of them down the aisle. The drama behind the story of what happened to her first wedding dress gives a heartwarming ending to what must have been a very difficult time for the most revered screen actress of her generation.
Audrey spent her childhood moving between her home country of Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands, before training as a ballet dancer, and then as a chorus girl in London’s West End.
Her big break came in the early 1950s with the movie Roman Holiday, for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress, and off the big screen, her love life was filled with drama. In the latest in our Wedding Dress Drama series, we take a look at why Audrey Hepburn did something very unexpected with her unworn wedding dress.
Inside Audrey Hepburn’s Wedding Dress Drama
The much-loved actress, beauty and fashion icon, was just 22 when she met and fell for businessman James Hanson, a tall, handsome and extremely wealthy British industrialist she had met in London.
A quick proposal in 1951 followed, and a date was set for their wedding which was allegedly to happen in early 1952.
Audrey, who was filming Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck in the Italian capital at the time, commissioned the Rome-based Sorelle Fontana, or the Fontana Sisters, to create her gown. The floor-length satin wedding dress had full-length sleeves and an elegant boat neck, and bow embellishment at the front, and she styled it with gloves and a veil for a photo at the dress fitting.
Sadly, she would never wear the dress again, because with a heavy heart Audrey called off the wedding within a year, citing scheduling issues between herself and Hanson. With her star on the rise, Audrey felt that their diverging careers and lifestyles, would make a successful marriage impossible, stating she wanted to be “really married”.
As for the dress, Audrey returned the gown to the Fontana sisters, asking them to donate it to another girl who hopefully would have more luck. She reportedly said to the sisters that they should give the dress to “another girl for her wedding, perhaps someone who couldn’t ever afford a dress like mine—the most beautiful, poor Italian girl you can find.”
The lucky girl in question was Amiable Altobella. She eventually wore the beautiful dress for her rustic wedding on an Italian farm and, years later, she sold it as part of an auction of personal items belonging to Audrey Hepburn in 2009.
The gown had a guide price of €9,000 to €13,300, and it sold for nearly €20,000 with half the proceeds going to the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund. Altobella said at the time of selling the dress for a worthy cause: “I have had a happy marriage, so the dress brought me luck.”
Audrey herself was not quite so lucky in marriage as she was to marry and divorce twice after calling off her wedding to James.
However, she did find true love with Robert Wolders who was the last romantic partner and “great love” of Audrey Hepburn’s life, with whom she shared a devoted relationship from 1980 until her tragic early death in 1993. Interestingly, they never married, but maybe twice bitten, thrice shy.
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