Fashion has always needed an audience, and for much of the 20th century the biggest audience in the world sat in the dark. When a Paris couturier dressed a film star, a dress that might once have been seen by a few clients in a salon was seen by millions. Two partnerships show how that worked better than any others: Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn, and Yves Saint Laurent and Catherine Deneuve.
Both began in Paris. Both reached New York. And both changed what people expected a designer to be.
Givenchy, Hepburn and a disputed credit
Givenchy founded his house in 1952. He met Hepburn the following year, when she was preparing to make Billy Wilder’s Sabrina, the story of a chauffeur’s daughter who comes home from two years in Paris transformed. It is fitting that the film’s most debated question is about clothes.
Edith Head won the Academy Award for costume design for Sabrina. Many of Hepburn’s outfits, however, have long been associated with Givenchy. Head said in a 1974 interview that she had created the dresses, drawing on Givenchy designs Hepburn liked. After Head’s death, Givenchy said the film’s black cocktail dress had been made at Paramount under Head’s supervision but was his design. The question has never been fully settled, and it has become part of the film’s legend.
The partnership continued. For Funny Face, the 1957 musical in which a Greenwich Village bookshop clerk is turned into a fashion model and flown to Paris for the shoot, Head and Givenchy shared an Academy Award nomination for costume design. Givenchy also created his first perfumes for Hepburn, and she became the face of L’Interdit.
A Paris dress on Fifth Avenue
The most famous result of the partnership is set in New York. In the opening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Hepburn’s Holly Golightly steps out of a taxi onto an empty, early-morning Fifth Avenue in a long black Givenchy dress and looks into the window of Tiffany’s.
That dress became one of the most valuable garments ever made for the screen. It was one of three identical dresses made for the film, according to Christie’s, and Givenchy gave his own to friends, the writer Dominique Lapierre and his wife, to raise money for their charity, City of Joy Aid. On December 5, 2006, Christie’s in London sold it for £467,200, which the auction house called a new world auction record for a dress made for a film. The Guardian described it as black Italian satin, sleeveless, with a 24-inch waist and a slit to the thigh.
The lesson for anyone who builds a brand is plain. A single scene, worn by the right person in the right city, can outlast decades of advertising.
Saint Laurent and the screen
Saint Laurent’s relationship with cinema was more personal. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris describes his film work as growing out of special affinities with particular directors and actresses, and none mattered more than Deneuve.
For Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967), Saint Laurent created an entire wardrobe for Deneuve’s character, Séverine Serizy. The museum singles out two pieces: a black vinyl trench coat with knit sleeves and an austere black dress with ivory satin collar and cuffs. Both crossed over into real life. According to the museum, the trench was part of his Saint Laurent Rive Gauche 1966 collection and its sales rose with the film’s popularity, while the shoes Deneuve wore, from an earlier collection, became so popular that they were named after the film.
Deneuve herself gave Saint Laurent the credit. As quoted by the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, she said that “the character’s style really owes a lot to the image Saint Laurent created.” The collaboration became a long friendship. The museum’s collection includes his costume sketches for her in La Chamade (1968) and Mississippi Mermaid (1969), and he dressed her years later in The Hunger (1983).
Saint Laurent also looked across the Atlantic. In September 1968 he opened the first Rive Gauche store in the United States, on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and in 1983 he became the first living designer to be given a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Cannes and the red carpet rules
Today the meeting point of French cinema and fashion is the Festival de Cannes, and its rules are strict. For the evening gala screenings in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the festival’s FAQ requires evening wear, a long dress or a tuxedo. It also lists alternatives, including a little black dress, a cocktail dress, a dark pantsuit and a black or navy suit with a bow tie or dark tie. Sneakers are not allowed. Nudity is prohibited on the red carpet, and voluminous outfits with large trains that slow the flow of guests are not permitted.
For a designer, those rules are a brief, not a limit. A gown that works at Cannes has to climb the steps, take a seat and still read in a photograph.
Where to see it in Paris
The best place to stand inside this history is 5 avenue Marceau. Saint Laurent’s haute couture house was based in that mansion from 1974 to 2002. It held the studio where he worked with six or seven collaborators and ateliers where nearly 200 tailors and seamstresses made his designs. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris opened there on October 3, 2017. Its displays change, and the studio pictured at the top of this article is the room where he worked with his team. Check the museum’s site for current exhibitions and tickets before you go.
Read on: what the term really means in What Haute Couture Really Means, and how to plan a season in the city with our Paris Fashion Week guide for emerging designers.
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Sources
- Christie’s, lot: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961 (Film and Entertainment sale, Dec 5, 2006)
- Christie’s, press release: Record price realized at Christie’s for iconic dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Dec 5, 2006)
- The Guardian, “From Tiffany’s to Christie’s – dress fetches £467,200” (Dec 6, 2006)
- Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, “Belle de Jour” (1967)
- Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, “Yves Saint Laurent and the Cinema: The costumes of Belle de Jour” (2018)
- Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, collection: Cinéma
- Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, “The Move to 5 avenue Marceau”
- Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, “The Museum”
- Festival de Cannes, FAQ: Is there a dress code when attending screenings?
- Wikipedia, “Hubert de Givenchy” (secondary; founding, 1953 meeting, fragrances)
- Wikipedia, “Sabrina (1954 film)” (secondary; plot, costume credit dispute)
- Wikipedia, “Funny Face” (secondary; plot, costume design nomination)
- Wikipedia, “Yves Saint Laurent (designer)” (secondary; Madison Avenue store, 1983 Met exhibition)
- Wikipedia, “Catherine Deneuve” (secondary; The Hunger)
Photo: “Le studio d’Yves Saint Laurent (Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Paris) – 31940295547” by dalbera, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Photo: “Givency, completo da cocktail indossato da audrey hepburn in colazione da tiffany, 1961” by Sailko, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Editor’s note: facts in this article were checked against the linked sources in October 2026. Catherine Deneuve’s words are quoted as published by the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris; other accounts are paraphrased from the sources listed. The Cannes dress code is as published in the festival’s FAQ and can change from one edition to the next.
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