Becoming Audrey

Zara top (similar)
Zara skirt (similar)
Celine sunglasses
Agape Studio necklace (c/o) (similar)
Linjer ring (c/o)
Location: Palacio Santa Clara – Valencia, Spain

I didn’t think much of the movie Roman Holiday when I watched it for the first time. That’s no surprise to anyone because I’ve written about it before. But while the story, with its simply silly but ultimately hopeless romance, didn’t charm me, Audrey Hepburn did. At thirteen, based on a single film, I internalised an idea of the woman I wanted to become – and that woman was Audrey herself.

That will likely seem relatively obvious to anyone who’s been here for a while. The primary source of my sartorial inspiration is clear in my predilection for Louis Vuitton handbags and silk scarves. It’s true that I don’t spend a great deal of time looking at vintage photos to recreate specific outfits. In fact, there are periods in my life when I don’t give Audrey and her wardrobe, her approach to elegance, a second thought. But it’s always there in my subconscious, subtly influencing my shopping and styling decisions.

It’s only recently that I’ve become aware of just how obviously I wanted to be Audrey, as a teenager. And just how little I understood that. When I watched Charade for the first time, I abruptly found my career path: I would be a translator, working for the UN. But I didn’t connect my seemingly spontaneous decision to the film. I had a gift for languages, that was all; this seemed like a glamorous and exciting way to use it.

…of course it did. When Audrey Hepburn did it, she got to wear new season Givenchy and lived in an expansive Parisian apartment. Everything about those possibilities appealed to me, and the work probably wouldn’t be too bad, either. (Who am I kidding? I didn’t give a second thought to what the work days would actually be like. How could I? I was fifteen. The fact that I would someday need a full-time job to pay bills and buy groceries and just survive was still an abstract concept for me.)

My dream of living in Paris predates the first time I watched Funny Girl, but the film gave shape and colour to my vision of what a Paris life might look like… not to mention supporting the idea that a girl like me, who always had her nose stuck in a book, might someday, by the right people, be recognized as stylish and exciting.

I could go on, listing movies starring Audrey Hepburn and their specific influence on my teenaged dreams of the future. But I don’t need to. It’s all visible, if you know what you’re looking for – and somehow, to me, feels particularly so in these photos from Valencia, because they capture the essence of the woman that I imagined I might someday be. She’s arrived, she’s real and while she isn’t Audrey, while her story is a bit from different from the one she would have written for herself, she is everything I hoped to be.

When I started Coco & Vera all those years ago – it feels like another life, honestly – the initial feedback from people in my life was mixed. Those who truly cared for me encouraged anything that would give me a space to write, but there were others who derided what they perceived as my vanity and narcissism. (“So you’re just taking pictures of yourself?” I distinctly remember that comment, and the memory of all the other judgemental comments from the same person over the years. That was the end of our relationship.) It’s possible there are some people who still see what I do in that way. It doesn’t matter. This space exists, more than anything else, as a personal archive – a history of my growth, my evolution, in words and pictures. I haven’t become Audrey. But the path that the influence of her characters led me down brought me here.

And truly, I couldn’t be happier.

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