When Audrey Hepburn strolled into Hubert de Givenchy’s Paris studio, in 1953, the now-legendary designer was surprised. “I was told that ‘Miss Hepburn’ was coming to look for clothes for her new movie,” Givenchy reminisced. Since he loved Katharine Hepburn’s fashion sense, the designer was excited to meet her. But: “I was quite astonished when this young, small, sparkly girl showed up,” he said, in 2016.
LEFT: Katharine Hepburn by Clarence Sinclair Bull, 1941. RIGHT: Audrey Hepburn by Yousuf Karsh, 1956.
Today, it’s hard to imagine that Audrey Hepburn was ever unknown, but when the gamine, Belgian-born actress burst onto the Hollywood scene, she was initially compared and contrasted against the staunch Connecticut actor whose surname she just happened to share.
“It is unheard of in astronomical circles to have two stars of the same name,” wrote the French author Colette, in 1952. However, “In the theatre, it is different.”
At the dawn of Audrey Hepburn’s career, Colette remarked that there was another “fixed star, also named Hepburn… So now American stargazers will behold two shining Hepburns.”
(With a flourish, Colette gloated, “I did not need a telescope to discover my Hepburn.”)
Sick burn, Colette. Henry-Julien Detouche, ca. 19th century, via Wikimedia Commons
Turns out, the enigma of the two Hepburns still fascinates today:
“It is so weird that two of our biggest Hollywood stars have the last name Hepburn and I’ve never met anyone else with the last name Hepburn,” quipped James Frankie Thomas, in an interview for my podcast, Teen People, last year.
So, when I heard about DALL·E mini (an Artificial Intelligence model that generates images from user prompts), I thought it might be interesting to pair the two Hepburns together. (Fun fact: it’s not known whether Audrey and Katharine Hepburn ever met.)
Behold, the results:
Cribbing from a corpus of the two stars’ promotional pictures, DALL·E has regurgitated a spartan palette of monochromatic fashions: crisp men’s shirts, Little Black Dresses, tweed suiting, and trousers. Lapels and collars are a recurring motif, as are long, sharp arms and nipped waists. Their faces, when legible, whorl with bruises like a Jenny Saville painting.
These two look like a couple of bosom buddies at a Seven Sisters college—all rayon knitwear on sea-salted collarbones, glossy ponytails, wool trousers and Grandma’s pearls. They seem to confide in each other, perhaps after opening a vexing letter from home, or as if to share the contents of a well-timed care package from Mummy.
Here, Katharine appears to be eating an apple—or is it a clutch of Audrey’s hair? Who’s to say? This one feels cursèd.
This pair appear joined at the kidneys, curling towards the camera like something from the minds of David Cronenberg and Guillermo del Toro.
“Hello, Mother, Dear,” they coo.
Run.
This one feels like a still from Audrey Hepburn’s 1961 drama The Children’s Hour, except Shirley MacLaine is played by Katharine Hepburn and both women get the happy ending they deserve.
Curiously paired with a puddle of goo, Audrey’s blank expression appears to say, “Who, me?”
Who, indeed?
Tête-à-tête. These figures recall a pair of flash-lit wraiths from Weegee’s street portraits.
Here, Audrey is reduced to a narrow brushstroke (or perhaps a slithering extension of Kate’s waistcoat??). It’s Katharine’s turn to shine, and she does, legs folded beneath her in a typically casual pose.
Coming up: lunar fashions, AI pop art, and more “copyKates” than you can shake a stick at. It’s DALL·Eance.