Audrey Hepburn’s Little Black Dress Hawked Off At Auction

It's rare that you can say that you own a genuine cultural keystone, an iconic piece of movie history. We can - we own the headband Hulk Hogan wore in his 1991 opus Suburban Commando - but can you?

Chances are you can't, but if you're a tiny woman which loads of money and delusions of being classy, soon you'll be able to. The famous little black dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast At Tiffany's is to be auctioned off for charity at the end of the year, and is expected to raise between £50,000 - £70,000. Although why anyone would spend that much is beyond us - it's a 45-year old sliver of material that probably stinks of cigarettes, cats, ukuleles and Hannibal out of The A Team.

There's probably no better way of raising a load of money than to auction off stuff that used to belong to someone dead who used to be famous, and the more famous the better. A John Lennon suit can sell for £66,000, a Jerry Garcia toilet can sell for £40,000 and a load of old Marlon Brando crap can sell for £1.2 million. At the other end of the scale, a kidney stone that's been inside William Shatner's penis will cost just £13,000. But that's all boy's stuff - where are all the auctions for slightly ghoulish women?

That's all about to change with the auction of Audrey Hepburn's iconic black dress from Breakfast At Tiffany's, the film that made loads of women think they were cool if they spoke all la-di-dah like Audrey Hepburn, the film that inspired that fuckawful Breakfast At Tiffany's song from ten years ago, and the film that convinced legions of idiots that Tiffany's was a greasy spoon cafe and not an expensive jewellers.

For Breakfast At Tiffany's, Hubert de Givency was put in charge of Audrey Hepburn's wardrobe, and created the black dress for the opening scene of the movie where Hepburn stumbles out of a taxi stuffing her face with a pastry. The dress has been ripped off countless times by other designers and high street stores, but you'll be able to get your hands on the genuine article on December 5, when it is auctioned off in London to raise an estimated £50,000 - £70,000 for underprivileged people in India.

And least Audrey Hepburn is dead so she can't yank the dress from the auction just before bidding stops, like Britney Spears did with her bra.

Read more:

Hepburn dress in charity auction - BBC

[story by Stuart Heritage]