Audrey Hepburn Wore Royal Jewels in 'Funny Face'

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There's a scene in the 1957 musical comedy Funny Face when Audrey Hepburn's character, Jo, descends a staircase at the Louvre wearing a vibrant red floor-length gown and matching chiffon stole, paired with an ornate emerald necklace. She shouts, "Take the picture! Take the picture!" as Fred Astaire's character, Dick, leans low to capture the perfect shot.

The dress in question was created by Hubert de Givenchy, a designer Hepburn famously had close companionship with until her death in 1993. And the emerald sparkler? Rumor has it, it actually belonged to Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor.

In Audrey Hepburn in Paris, a new book offering a glimpse into the icon's most memorable moments in the City of Light, author Meghan Friedlander reveals that the Funny Face costume department borrowed the jewels for the scene. According to Friedlander, famed fashion editor Diana Vreeland had first spotted the Duchess of Windsor wearing the necklace at a dinner and thought it would be the perfect finishing touch for Hepburn's glamorous look. Vreeland approached the shunned royal about creating a replica, but instead, the Duchess generously loaned Hepburn the original piece for a single day.

"That's my favorite anecdote in the book," Friedlander tells Town & Country. "It was actually my friend Eduardo Sousa, an Audrey Hepburn fanatic from Brazil who knows everything there is to know about fashion, who found it. He has a large collection of vintage Brazilian magazines that are impossible to find, and if you do find them on eBay, they're worth hundreds of dollars. And so, this anecdote was in one of his Brazilian magazines from 1957."

While it's never been confirmed which emerald necklace Wallis Simpson gave Hepburn, it has been well documented that the Duchess loved her green gems dearly. Her engagement ring from the Duke of Windsor featured an emerald stone, and she was known to own several emerald necklaces. It's possible that the jewels Hepburn wore around her neck came from a pair of ankle bracelets previously owned by Sita Devi Sahib, the Maharani of Baroda, which were then sold to Harry Winston and refashioned, reports the Royal Watcher, a blog dedicated to royal jewels. The updated necklace featured 52 cabochon pear-shaped emeralds and 28 rose-cut diamonds.

According to Spanish jewelry expert Pablo Milstein, the Duchess of Windsor ended up getting rid of the necklace after the Maharani—her alleged arch nemesis—made a snarky comment about the fact that the gems were originally worn around her ankle. The Duchess reportedly exchanged them for a 48.95 carat pear-shaped emerald from Harry Winston. The stone is said to have been property of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who sold it after he was exiled from his Kingdom in 1931. Later, the stone was suspended on a Cartier necklace, a piece the Duchess famously wore until her later years.

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