Reinvention – Well Done

This photo was reprinted in this month’s Harper’s Bazaar. It was originally seen in the April 1964 issue of Bazaar, along with some wonderful info about the fashionable Audrey Hepburn.

According to this article from the archives of Harper’s Bazaar:
“When Cecil Beaton photographed My Fair Lady star Audrey Hepburn for Harper’s Bazaar’s April 1964 issue in costumes from the film that he had designed, she was at the peak of her powers. In the 1950’s and 60’s, Hepburn had starred in a run of big movies, like Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that made her one of the most bankable (and fashionable) women in Hollywood. But My Fair Lady, which tells the story of the precarious reinvention of Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle, who goes from selling flowers on the streets of London to milling about the exclusive upper reaches of British society, would also mark a turning point for her. Over the next three decades, Hepburn would act only periodically, choosing instead to focus on her family and the humanitarian work that would play a larger role in her life. At the time of her death, in 1993, she was devoting much of her energy to working with UNICEF on famine relief efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was a pursuit that was personal for Hepburn, whose own family had suffered from starvation during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. ‘I auditioned for this job for 45 years, and I finally got it,’ she said after being named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1989. To Hepburn, reinvention wasn’t about changing herself to become someone else but finding the space to be who you are.”

And aren’t we all glad she was who she was, that she was not only that lovely star who graced the screens of movie theaters and made us forget our troubles for a couple of hours and fanned the flames of our dreams, but she found that space to become another part of who she really was in working to ease the pain of others. Well Done Audrey….Well Done!