Cover Audrey Hepburn (Photo: courtesy of Intimate Audrey official website)
Audrey Hepburn (Photo: courtesy of Intimate Audrey official website)
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For the last 30 years, people have been asking Sean Hepburn Ferrer what Audrey Hepburn was really like in real life. This exhibit is the answer
Behind the glitz and glamour, behind the fame and virality, Audrey Kathleen Hepburn was first and foremost a woman. A mother. She was born in Belgium and grew up in England—then moved to the Netherlands at the onset of World War II. During her early 20s, she studied acting and worked as a model and dancer, and then caught the eye of French novelist Colette, who insisted that she be cast in the 1944 play Gigi. The rest is history. This, the story of her life, is the focus of Intimate Audrey.
“You have to think of it like a movie,” says Sean Hepburn Ferrer when asked to describe the Intimate Audrey exhibition open to the public on August 1 to October 29, 2023, at The Museum at S Maison, Pasay City. “When you sit in a theatre, it features actors, costumes, music, good camera, good lighting, makeup and everything, but you don’t see any of that. You see the finished product.” This was how the exhibition was carefully set up: an experience for the eyes, ears, and heart.
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Intimate Audrey is the third series of exhibitions that Ferrer has produced over the past 30 years to raise funds for children’s causes and charities. “This one I created for what would have been her 90th birthday anniversary, May 4, 2019. It opened in Brussels, which is her birthday. It then moved to Amsterdam, where she spent the war…and here we are.”
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The exhibit is part of an evolution. The first one was with Ferragamo and was mostly fashion based. It started in Florence, became a big success, and then went to Japan, Australia, and Hong Kong, among other places.
“The second one I produced was more of a hybrid, it still had a lot of memorabilia, clothes, and fashion, but also started to talk more about the woman and her philosophy,” he shares.
Above A portrait of Sean Hepburn Ferrer
Above Sean Hepburn Ferrer during the exhibit’s vernissage
A portrait of Sean Hepburn Ferrer
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He recollects, “And then, at the last installation of the Timeless Audrey…I was sitting one afternoon. It was kind of quiet. [Then arrived a] very elegant couple, I couldn’t see their faces, but they would take a few steps. They would lead down and read all the captions of the things [in the exhibit]. And it clicked in my mind at that moment: that’s not where Audrey Hepburn is. Audrey Hepburn is not down here, with ballerina shoes. Of course, you can have a little bit of that. But it’s about ‘who is this woman?’ We want to know her…what was she really like? And so Intimate Audrey is just that. It’s an experience.”
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The exhibit in Manila is a tribute to the Filipinos who admire the actress greatly. It was also due to Carmina Sanchez Jacob, who Ferrer describes as the “passion” behind this project. “She is the reason why I’m here [in the Philippines].”
His friends are another reason. “Marlon Brando’s last wife was a Filipino woman. And she always told me that people love her here, just like in Japan. And that love is really the answer to why she is still so beloved today,” he says.
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Elizabeth Taylor is Cleopatra—the untouchable, Parthenon of Hollywood. She’s up there; we can never get close to her. My mother, however, is the girl from across the land that goes out into the world with a little black dress and her courage. And we feel she’s one of us.
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In ensuring that his mother remains relevant, Ferrer insists that he doesn’t have to do anything. Audrey Hepburn is permanently viral. “She already belongs to the people. So, in effect, the best thing I can do is go to the table and cover my head and do absolutely nothing. Because I don’t want to ruin that. So, I can do a little exhibition, a little book, a little something like that. But I don’t want to, in any way, change that perception.”
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You will discover the different facets that made one Audrey Hepburn. Apart from the icon she had become, this also explores a woman who lived a humble and ordinary life like everybody else.
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“When you see her wedding dress, you will see it’s a simple little white dress,” says Ferrer. “You can become permanently viral, which she is today everywhere in the world. On Instagram, on any kind of platform. She’s everywhere. And yet, you can be a normal person.”
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This exhibit, like all his other ones, means a lot to him and his family. “In this world, where I believe that fame, celebrity luxury, and all of that has a little bit lost its way, I think the biggest message in this exhibition is you can be loved, you can be famous, for the right reasons.”
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Angela Nicole Regis Guiral is a digital editor at Tatler Philippines. She studied journalism and has since written features that look closely at how culture, lifestyle and social impact converge, while occasionally wandering into the worlds of style and travel.
