A Brief Guide to Emily in Paris’s Many Audrey Hepburn References
It all began innocently enough. In Season 1, Episode 6 of Emily in Paris (“Ringarde”), Lily Collins’s Emily Cooper is invited to see a performance of Swan Lake with a snooty Frenchman by the name of Thomas. She hies to the theater—the glorious Palais Garnier—in an off-the-shoulder black dress with bedazzled pumps, and pauses on the steps of its grand lobby, all aglow with bulbous, candelabra-like light fixtures. Only then is the viewer able to take in her visage…and she’s the spitting image of Audrey Hepburn in 1957’s Funny Face.
Hepburn-heads will know the visual: Fred Astaire’s Dick Avery (inspired by real-life photographer Richard “Dick” Avedon) takes Hepburn’s Jo Stockton to the theater after dark, and asks her to ascend and descend the steps as he snaps his Rolleiflex. To split hairs, Hepburn is actually wearing a pale dress with an emerald green Givenchy coat dress on top, but the Funny Face homage in Emily in Paris still tracks.
Yes, Emily goes on to flip her condescending date the bird before bombarding a top Parisian designer in his box—two decidedly un-Audrey gestures. Yet the scene on the stairs would mark the first of many Hepburn references in Emily in Paris, especially come Season 4.
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In promotional materials for the fourth seasons’s second half, out tomorrow, Hepburn lovers will clock four more allusions. In one poster, Lily Collins is dressed in a fantastic red satin getup with coordinating opera gloves as she descends Rome’s Spanish Steps—a clear nod to the “Take the picture!” scene in Funny Face, filmed on the Louvre’s Daru staircase.
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Additional allusions draw from other Hepburn films, namely, 1953’s Roman Holiday and 1963’s Charade. In stills, Emily is seen riding a Vespa and wearing neckerchief with a new boy—just like Princess Ann in Roman Holiday. Elsewhere, an apparently Apline Emily does a very faithful recreation of Hepburn’s look as Regina Lampert in the opening scene of Charade, set in Megève.
Speaking with WWD, Marylin Fitoussi, Emily in Paris’s current costume designer, revealed that she was able to get her hands on the exact pair of Pierre Marly glasses Hepburn wore onscreen. “When Lily tried them on, we were crying, shouting, and having goosebumps. Every season we have a tribute to Audrey Hepburn, it’s part of the game now,” she said. (Fitoussi did note, however, that Collins wore a recreation of the glasses for shooting, and that unlike Hepburn, she opted for a faux fur hat over her balaclava.)
Eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted a few Hepburn references earlier in the season, too. In episode 3, titled “Masquerade,” the look Emily wears to the Baccarat fragrance launch ball had two key inspirations, per its designer, Harris Reed: Babe Paley’s daughter Amanda Carter Burden at Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White ball, and Cecil Beaton’s costumes for Hepburn in 1964’s My Fair Lady.
With the show seeming to work its way through Hepburn’s IMDB credits, it’s a wonder there have been no allusions (as yet) to 1964’s Paris When It Sizzles, an undeniably zany film that offers the same empty yet irresistible calories as Emily in Paris. And because Breakfast at Tiffany’s has so far remained untouched, we’d bet they’re saving Hepburn’s little black Givenchy dress for something special—say, Emily’s last-ever morning in Paris?
If you’re reading this having not watched a single episode of the show, you’d be forgiven for thinking that, surely, there is some reason for all the Hepburn references—beyond Collins’s not insignificant resemblance, that is. (The gamine features! Those striking brows!) You can chalk it up to the American-in-Paris theme loosely linking the series to Funny Face, or just consider that one can’t walk past an amateur caricaturist in Central Park without spotting Hepburn’s likeness, nor visit many college-aged girls’ dorm rooms without seeing the same image of Hepburn nibbling at a danish. The whole world winks at Audrey—so why shouldn’t Emily?
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