ICONS (Part 1) - Audrey Hepburn TM: Replicating “One of a Kind”

Exploring the Icons for our Frame Fitting Guide - Part 1. As part of a four short articles series, we delve into the personality traits thhttps://www.jabrock.com/stories/what-sunglasses-suit-my-face-shape-at inspire us.

In 2013, Audrey Hepburn TM appeared in an advert for Galaxy Chocolate. Of course, it wasn’t really Audrey in the ad. How could it have been when Hepburn had passed away more than 20 years earlier?

Much like the Galaxy ad re-created Audrey, we had fun exploring the possibility of her with a pair of Bullruns through illustration, using our face shape guide.

In conjunction with Mars, and with the permission of Hepburn’s estate, twelve artists spent more than six months bringing Hepburn back to “life” for the innovative ad. Could the production realistically hope to capture the inimitable presence of Hepburn?

With “Audrey” being the star of the show, using a lookalike wouldn’t have cut the mustard, so the team turned to technology instead. The process of replicating a photorealistic 100% CGI human was revolutionary in many ways, starting a trend for the digital revival of celebrities no longer with us, and there were plenty of hurdles along the way.

For example, present-day body doubles (onto whom a digital face would be mapped) really struggled to replicate Hepburn’s movements and mannerisms. It would have been far less costly, in terms of both time and money, to simply use a modern actress instead. All of which begs the question, why persist?

The answer is a simple one: Audrey is one of a kind.

Her presence alone made the commercial something that it couldn’t otherwise have been.

But here’s the thing. In an age of 3D printing and dead musicians – Buddy Holly, Amy Winehouse and Tupac, to name a few – touring as holograms, “one of a kind” doesn’t necessarily mean one of a kind anymore.

It’s fitting that Ms Hepburn was “replicated” in this way, albeit only for a short TV spot and not a full movie, because the very same thing once happened to her sunglasses.

In Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Hepburn’s Holly Golightly character wore custom Manhattan shades by Oliver Goldsmith that were made for the film, along with a black Givenchy dress that was recently auctioned off for close to a million dollars.

Often mistaken for Ray Ban Wayfarers, and with more than a passing resemblance to our Delta silhouette, audiences have been going wild for Golightly’s sunglasses ever since.

Goldsmith re-released the Manhattan silhouette in 2011, making them available to the masses, and turned what had once been “one of a kind” into many of a kind. In doing so, he unintentionally opened up a wider debate about authenticity.

Shakespeare wrote that clothes make the man, but there’s more to it than that. Donning an exact replica of the jersey worn by your favourite team doesn’t actually make you a better football player, and wearing Golightly dupes doesn’t make you Audrey Hepburn TM.

Talking about the Galaxy Hepburn ad, VFX supervisor William Bartlett said when the team was finished that everything “went together...and it didn’t look like her, it was quite a bizarre thing. It worked in freeze frame but in motion, it just didn’t seem like her. We needed the nuance of her performance.”

He describes how they had to go back, painstakingly adding small animations and tweaks to the footage they had in order to really achieve the Hepburn effect. The result is a feat of technology, and...well, let’s say 99% Audrey.

There’s something about “one of a kind” individuals and items that makes them nigh on impossible to replicate. Somewhere at the intersection of creativity and technology, however, you can re-create if you explore hard enough. Even if it’s only for 30 seconds or so.

That is one of the core concepts that fascinated us when we started Jabrock – our eyewear is inspired by pushing boundaries and exploring concepts, using materials that had never been used for sunglasses before.

With a wood grain that differs from pair to pair, and plenty of hand-finished touches, we like to think that our frames stand for what perhaps Audrey is defined as: A true one of a kind.

So, here’s to continuing to explore the boundries. Lets keep pushing.