Breakfast at Tiffany's: $807,000

December 06, 2006

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Audrey Hepburn's iconic black dress from the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's' went for $807,000 on Tuesday. The price, paid by a telephone bidder, was almost six times the highest pre-sale estimate.

Proceeds from the sale will go to the charity City of Joy Aid, which helps India's poor. The founders of the charity had received the dress as a gift from designer Hubert de Givenchy.

''I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools,'' said the co-seller, Dominique Lapierre.

Hepburn wore the dress for one of her best-known roles, as eccentric Manhattan socialite Holly Golightly in the film adaptation of Truman Capote's novel. The opening scenes of the film show Hepburn in the dress emerging from a taxi on Fifth Avenue with her brown-bag breakfast to ogle diamonds and luxury goods in the storefront windows of Tiffany & Co.

Givenchy designed Hepburn's wardrobe for many of her films, including ''Sabrina'' and ''Funny Face,'' a film about the French fashion world. He regarded Hepburn as his muse, and her willowy frame, long neck and face became hallmarks of 1960s beauty.

The Givenchy dress had been expected to fetch between $98,000 and $138,000 as part of a sale of film and television memorabilia at Christie's auction house in London.

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