Timeless Audrey in Berlin

Oh, finally! I have just finished uploading my pictures from the Timeless Audrey exhibit in Berlin to Flickr for your enjoyment.


First I'd like to thank Daniel yet again for getting us in to the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award ceremony, and for being so very generous as to allow me to take all the pictures I wanted and share them with you. As such, I ask that you please not use (or abuse) these photos in any way. Pictures are not allowed in the exhibit on a normal basis but an exception was granted, and I'd like to show that not only I but all of us are appreciative of this exception and will follow the rules. So, like all beautiful things, look and admire but leave it as you found it. Thank you, and enjoy the view. :)


Edit: Oh shoot! I was sure I'd mentioned this in a previous post, but on looking back I realize I never gave thanks to the person who made this trip to Berlin possible. I'm such a heel. Anyway, if you're the sort of Audrey fan who hits all the cool websites then you know Richard from Audrey1. It was his idea for him, Kendal (whom you may also know) and I to see this exhibit while we could, made all the arrangements, everything to make sure we appeared at the door in one piece. So click the link and drop by the forums (if you don't already) or write a note saying, "You're cool!" Or be original and make up your own thing, just say thanks for having this idea and the drive to do it that gave us a good look at the usually mysterious exhibit we've all heard about but have never really seen before now. Thank you, Richard, and I'm very sorry I didn't in fact put up a thank you note earlier like my demented mind thought I had. Please forgive!

Zum Geburtstag viel Glück!

I'm still in Germany right now, but somewhere in the world it's still May 4th and Audrey's birthday. So I'm not really late. :) Went to the Timeless Audrey exhibit, of course, and thanks to dear Daniel Acksteiner got to see the award ceremony for the 2009 Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award. I'm using other people's computers until I get back home and my cable to hookup the camera is in my hotel room, so I'm afraid there's no pictures yet. When I get back to Paris, promise. :) In the meantime, wish Audrey a happyy 80th birthday in your own special way, even if it's just watching your favourite movie of hers, and have a great rest of the day.

More later . . .

Be a part of Audrey

This time, my friends, there's good reason for my not updating regularly. I've been sitting on this as long as I can, but now I must share: I will be in Berlin for the Timeless Audrey exhibit on May 4, Audrey's birthday! I haven't found any details yet but I know that something special is happening on what would have been our fair lady's 80th birthday, so you shall know shortly after I do. :) I will, of course, be taking loads of pictures where I can (there's no photos allowed in the exhibit, but I'll see what I can do in the name of journalistic integrity) and bringing back as much information as possible for everyone that can't just jump out to Germany at the drop of a hat. (There's also rumors that the exhibit may be coming back to the US for a mini-tour, but nothing is confirmed.)

While perusing the exhibit's site, I found a link to some cool little thing that I swear wasn't there before. You can now submit a picture of yourself to be featured in a photo collage of Audrey for the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund! The catch is that it's about €10 to submit a picture of yourself -- or pay for a friend to upload their own picture -- but nearly all the proceeds go directly to the Children's Fund and their All Children In School program. You can find more information here, though be warned that it's entirely in German. I can give you translations if you want, or you can run it through Babelfish or some other online translator.

Lastly, the gallery exhibit/book signing event in L.A. is tonight and I will be there. Pictures are definitely allowed, so if you're in the neighborhood and can drop by, do so! There's supposed to be previously unseen pictures of Audrey up, plus, there's a picture book to thumb through. Who doesn't love Audrey themed picture books? :)

Svenska Mõbler
154 N. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
map
6-8 pm

And Saturday morning I will be flying out to Paris and from there to Berlin. I'll be back in Paris for two weeks and will try to hit every Audrey landmark in the city that I can to share with all of you, but I'm also there on "business" (researching a screenplay) and modeling, so I may be a bit loopy from jetlag and not sleeping. We'll see how it goes . . .

Timeless Audrey is alive!

Great news for all of the Audrey fans around the world who have been asking about the Timeless Audrey exhibit, the traveling display of Audrey Hepburn memorabilia. I got an email this morning from a fellow by the name of Daniel who tells me that the exhibit is currently in Berlin (Germany), and will stay there until May 10th. This is very exciting! After spending more than a year in Japan, where Audrey is still a very huge icon, the flats and displays needed to be refurbished after a lot of moving and general wear and tear, and no one at the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund was sure when the exhibit would be ready to travel again. Now we know. :)

Anyway, all proceeds from visitors to Timeless Audrey will directly benefit UNICEF's All Children In School, a project we know was very close to Audrey's heart. I'm putting up a copy of the flyer (in English, so I don't need to translate for you) below, and Daniel has also asked that I put up a link to a website put up expressly for Timeless Audrey's time in Germany, which I'm more than happy to do. The site can be found here. It's all in German, though, so brush up on your Deutsche before heading in. :)

That's the only information I have about the exhibit at this time, but I'll be sure to keep an eye out and see if I can't find out if it will be making other European stops. It'd be silly not to, right? And maybe someday it'll come back to the States and do a more extensive tour for us Americans that can't afford a trip right now. *sigh* Soon. The bad never lasts forever, even though it may feel like it, right?



Okay, that's all for now. If you haven't been around to visit lately, then you probably don't know that the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund website got quite a major overhaul and now matches the Audrey Bag site. Go look!

Grace Kelly follows Audrey Hepburn's footsteps

By now everyone must have heard about the Timeless Audrey exhibit. If you haven't, I shall refresh your memory: it's a traveling exhibit of memorabilia and personal items from Audrey Hepburn's public and private life, put together in an intimate, open show where you're close enough to actually touch certain items if you are so inclined. In fact, Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund executive director Ellen Erwin once said that people were a little too free to touch things -- women would walk off with Audrey's scarves! Anyway, this exhibit was around in New Orleans for a while, then toured Japan extensively for two years. It's being refurbished right now and is set to tour Europe next year, and who knows where it will go next?

But for now, Grace Kelly seems set to step in and fill that gap that the Timeless Audrey exhibit is leaving in its absence. To commemorate the 25 year anniversary of Princess Grace's untimely death, her family is putting together a remarkably similar concept called The Grace Kelly Years. Like Timeless Audrey, The Grace Kelly Years will feature a timeline of Grace's life and many artifacts from her short film career and private life as Princess of Monaco. The exhibit is set to open on July 12 in Monaco, and will then travel to New York in September, where two of Grace's dresses will be sold at auction. The interesting thing (besides the whole similar exhibit bit) is that her dresses will also be sold to benefit the charity of Grace's choice, and is expected to fetch more than the record-breaking amount that Audrey's black column dress from Breakfast at Tiffany's caught at auction last December. It's not recorded as to who gave that estimate, or if both dresses are being sold together or separately, or even where the dresses will be auctioned at, but we'll see if Grace can indeed knock Audrey out of her record-breaking spot. You can read more about Les Annees Grace Kelly (The Grace Kelly Years) here.

updates on the Timeless Audrey Exhibit; plus Natalie Portman

Late last year the official site of the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund said that the European leg of the Timeless Audrey Exhibit should be launching sometime in 2007. I wrote Ellen Erwin, executive director of the Children's Fund, to ask if any tour dates had been set as of yet for the tour. She was kind enough to write back, and it looks as if the tour will be delayed a bit. After traveling Japan for two years, the wall and platform props that are an integral part of the exhibit need to be refurbished, so it looks like 2008-2009 for the European tour. This just means more time to save money and plan for an Audrey-centered trip for some of us. ;) We'll have to wait a bit longer to see the exhibit, but it'll look sparkling and brand-new, which is worth waiting for.

In other news, Natalie Portman is again drawing comparisons to Audrey Hepburn. This time it's for the US premiere of Natalie's latest film, Paris, je t'aime. She was sporting a cute black and white mod dress and a very Audrey updo, as you can see in the picture to the right. What do you think?

more news from audreyhepburn.com

I received an email from Ellen Erwin, the Executive Director of the Children's Fund this morning. Since it's short, I'll just copy and paste it for everyone to read:

Just to let you know, the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund website has been recently updated and we are redesigning a brand new flash website for launch next year. Thanks for the mention on your website. Will you let your visitors know that our website is current? Thanks so much and best regards

Isn't that great? I can't wait to see how it will change. And maybe they'll post a full schedule of the exhibit's tour in Europe . . .

In other news, tons of articles are popping up about the upcoming auction of the Breakfast at Tiffany's dress, but I've found one article that stands out from the rest. Besides predicting that the dress will fetch about £70,000 ($126,000), this article says that other Audrey dresses will be auctioned! From Charade and Sabrina, though it doesn't say how many. I don't know, maybe the article is wrong, but maybe not. When the My Fair Lady dress went up, all the attention was on the dress, and no one mentioned that costume sketches from The Nun's Story were being sold as well. Well, either way, here's the full article.


The next article talks about the recent Melbourne races (it's the Australian equivalent of Ascot), and how the Little Black Dress was the most popular item worn there. About halfway down the page it talks about Audrey's role in the history of the dress, but the whole article is definitely worth a read, just to get a better history of the dress. You can read it here.

The last article is also from Australia, where they're preparing an exhibition on the ten most photographed people in the world. Audrey is included! Along with Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Queen Victoria, Adolph Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley. The exhibit runs from December 9 to March 25 at the Bendigo Art Gallery, and includes rare or "lost" photos along with more well known photos. The original article is here, and you can find a little more information, including ticket prices, here, at the museum's site.

audreyhepburn.com finally updates!

So I just got an email from the Children's Fund (don't get huffy, I'm on the mailing list just like a million other people are), and they're finally offering The Audrey Hepburn Treasures for sale on their website like they did when Sean's Elegant Spirit came out. But unlike Elegant, Treasures is not signed, so please make note of that. It's also selling at full price ($49.95 US), so I personally think you're better off at Amazon. And don't worry about hurting the Children's Fund, since they published the book anyway and will get the writer's cut.


What's better than that, though, is the fact that they've finally updated the events page! Now you can see what they're doing. They kind of cheated by entering stuff from the more recent past that hadn't been up before, but here's the link to the events page (now with pictures!), and for the lazy amongst you, here's a list of their upcoming events:

November 4, 2006
Audrey Hepburn will receive the Lifetime Humanitarian Rose Award at a gala being held at Kensington Palace in London, England. The honor is being given by the People's Princess Charitable Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in memory or Princess Diana, whose mission it is to raise funds for charities around the world using the Princess' collection of dresses it owns and which annually recognizes, "extraordinary individuals."

November 28, 2006
The 2006 Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award will be presented at UNICEFS's annual Snowflake Gala in New York City. Established in 2004, past recipients include Sir Roger Moore, Pamela Fiori and special award recipients Bob Geldof, Bono and One org.

2007
Timeless Audrey Exhibit – European Tour
After an 18 month, 10 city tour of Japan, Timeless Audrey, the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund traveling exhibit on the life and career of Audrey Hepburn, will launch its multi-city, multi-country European tour. Funds from the exhibit, created to benefit UNICEF's "All Children In School" educational initiative, help to provide 120,000,000 children with quality basic education.

No offense to the Europeans, but I'm pretty cheesed about that last entry. The exhibit was supposed to come to America this year (2006) and tour, and that would be the last stop. So you guys took our Audrey time! Completely not fair, unless I make a trip . . . well, thinking about it. Still, it was pretty mean of them to tell me about the American leg and get a lot of people's hopes up.

Also, there are a few new items in their shop for your shopping pleasure. Besides the two books they have up, there's also new UNICEF postcards, a DVD called "The Children of the Tsunami" (remember their big fundraising when the tsunami hit?), the t-shirts from before, the world music CD, and finally the Christmas cards with Audrey's drawings.

Moving on, I found an article that's really very funny. It talks about the upcoming dress auction, and as long as you're dreaming about buying it -- let alone wearing it! -- this article will help you choose some jewelry to go along with the priceless dress.

Next up is an article about Audrey's new wave of popularity, and while the author seems to admit that the Gap ads were crass and a bit silly, nothing could really hurt Audrey's image and it does well to promote her to new generations. It talks about her continuing popularity and her timelessness, and can be read in full here.

Lastly, here's yet another article talking about the Gap commercials, but this piece morphs into a review for Spoto's book. It says Spoto's book is formulaic, but gives a mini-biography of Audrey as well as some good quotes. One that's been pointed out in the Audrey Hepburn Circle is, "Humanitarian means human welfare and responding to human suffering -- that's what politics should be about, ideally." You can read the full story here.