Believe it or not, the social media Trump Hate mob was offended by that photo and others of Ivanka Trump wearing the dress at President Trump’s Inaugural Ball. Why, you well may ask, especially if you are of sound mind and under the age of 80? This is why…
Yes, Ivanka had the audacity to wear a recreation of one of the dresses Audrey Hepburn wore in “Sabrina,” a 1954 film with William Holden (above) and Humphrey Bogart. That film is so old that it had a remake, and the actor who played Bogart’s part is in his 80s, Harrison Ford. My late wife Grace loved Audrey Hepburn, and though I re-watched that film with her just about a year ago, I wouldn’t have picked up on the dress homage. But nothing is too petty and bonkers to attack a Trump over.
“She [Audrey] is the complete opposite of Ivanka’s silver spoon life,” read the comment of one lunatic. Typical ignoramus: Hepburn was raised in a wealthy family among the Dutch aristocracy; her mother was a baroness, her father a wealthy oil executive. But facts don’t matter to these nutcases.
“I’m a big Audrey fan, and this is 100 percent insulting to her memory,” said a Reddit user. “Before she was a glamorous, famous actress, she was a rebel against the very political movement Ivanka’s father emulates.”
And what would that “movement” be? I have no idea, and I know a lot about Hepburn. She was largely apolitical, and concerned with humanitarian work, children, and world peace. I suppose that the “movement” alluded to is Nazism: Hepburn’s family fled Hitler’s advance during World War II. And Ivanka is “Daughter of Hitler”!
“Ivanka can copy all the dresses she wants; what’s lacking is grace and elegance,” said another comment. Yeah, Ivanka looks like a real slob in that photo.
In fact, there was a reason for the dress. A defensive statement released by a White House rep explained that Hepburn “has long been a personal inspiration to Ivanka.” The first daughter was “honored to wear the gown and “incredibly grateful [to the] Arnault family and the Givenchy atelier for creating this masterpiece, capturing the original artistry and elegance with remarkable precision and craftsmanship,” the rep told the New York Post.
“Audrey Hepburn has long been a personal inspiration to Ivanka,” the statement added. “She views it as a great privilege to honor her legacy in this way and is incredibly grateful to the team at Givenchy for bringing this moment to life.” Ivanka’s father’s inauguration happened to fall on the 32nd anniversary of his Hepburn’s death.
The late actress’s son spoke up to explain the Trump-Hepburn connection. Sean Hepburn Ferrer, 64, said it was “no wonder” Ivanka chose to wear a recreation of his mother’s dress. The two families share a decades-long tie, said the son born to Hepburn and her ex-husband actor Mel Ferrer in 1960. “It is no wonder that growing up in a family which knew our mother as a household name, she chose to draw inspiration from her, to seek the ultimate elegance and class reference, for an occasion such as this one,” Sean told the Daily Mail. He also explained that his mother had a long-standing relationship with President Trump, extending to when he was a member of the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund advisory board in the early 1990s. “Over the past 71 years, her legacy has grown to become transgenerational and transnational,” Sean said
That would be nice if it were true, but it isn’t: I bet not one in a hundred Americans under the age of 50 could name a single Audrey Hepburn movie. A lot of them would confuse her with Katherine Hepburn. The truth is that Ivanka wearing that dress accomplished her mission, to evoke the memory of a brilliant talent and luminous human being, now on the way to being forgotten like so many others.
Ethics Alarms 
So funny that doing everything one could to not be killed by the NAZIs is deemed by the lefties to be “rebelling against the NAZIs.” What is wrong with these people?
What about “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” I seem to recall Mickey Rooney playing an irate Chinese neighbor in that film. Do I have that right?
Yes. Isn’t that a weird part of the movie? It’s such an odd plot. Of course, Truman Capote was an odd guy.
You have to blame the ridiculous Mickey Rooney role on director Blake Edwards, who was brilliant but who had some weird blind spots. It ruins the film. And don’t make the same mistake George Costanza did: the movie is materially different from what Capote wrote.
Never seen the movie, I only know it from the song.
Yes! I had phrased my response deliberately to evoke that song!
But it has been almost 30 years since I saw the movie, and it was really my sister and mother who were keen on it. But I remembered Audrey Hepburn!
Of course, the song most associated with the movie is its theme, “Moon River,” which was to Andy Williams what “White Christmas” was to Bing Crosby. There is actually a recording of Audrey singing the Henry Mancini classic, and wow, she couldn’t sing a lick.
That was cruel, Ryan. You might just spend a few more eons in Purgatory for causing that earworm.
jvb
Do they not know that Audrey’s mother, the baroness, dated a Nazi for a time?
A real Nazi and not a fake one or a person defamed as one?
Do they even know what a Nazi is?
Hunh…I see almost no resemblance. Ivanka is blonde, Hepburn is not. Ivanka has a necklace, Hepburn does not. And looky-there!…Ivanka is wearing gloves that pay homage to her African-American brothers and sisters. Hepburn?…well, her gloves look like a tip-o-the-cap to white supremacy and the Ku-Klux-Klan. See? One can find racist hints and markers anywhere. If all you have is a hammer…
And now that Hepburn’s son has said something that appears to be a defense of a member of the Trump family, it’s high time the perennial racists – the REAL racists, by the way – at Reddit start trashing Sean Ferrer and by extension, Audrey herself. After all, President Trump has an association with the Hepburns, and everything he touches turns racist, Nazi, misogynistic, and xenophobic…so the Hepburns must be tainted as well.
And then, so many of these smug Lefties sit at home – most likely in their mom’s basement because their quarter-million-dollar Ivy-League degree in Gender Pluralism Studies couldn’t land them a job any better than working the fryer at Long John Silver’s – and try to figure out why they just lost an election running the worst candidate in voting history with the singular platform of “he’s Hitler, he’s a Nazi, he’s a racist, and all his supporters are, too.”
I, for one, am not giving them any hints at all. They have four years to figure it out, and based on how they’re responding in the first week of President Trump’s second term, they’re not going to.
Good.
“And then, so many of these smug Lefties sit at home – most likely in their mom’s basement…”
Probably not. They probably have a high-paying job in the federal government.
Probably true…I was just being petty.
Keep in mind that these are the same people who celebrated when transexuals ran around topless on the White House lawn; speaking of grace and elegance.
nazi, fascist, dictator, Hitler- all hese words have lost any real defintion since they are so over used.
Have a parishioner who went on a rant concerning pizza boxes. A pizza maker had boxes made with the image of the members of the new adminsitration embossed on them. Said parishioner reacted by declaring both the pizza and the pizza maker to be FASCIST. He went on implying that the 20 y/o daughter of the pizza maker is unfortunate to have a MYSOGYNISTIC father, who won’t be there for her if she needs help.
BTW the pizza maker raised the daughther as a single father after his wife abandoned him and her daughter.
I know many fascist pizzas. For instance, pineapple on pizza? Invented by Mussolini when he was dancing around (scabbard in hand) in drunken stupor, tripped on a banana peel, causing him to fall forward and the knife sliced a piece of pineapple off the fruit and it fell on top of his pepperoni pizza. Thinking nothing of it, he ate it. The net morning, when he was debriefing with this staff, he mentioned eating something sweet. The horrified staff, not wanting to cross Il Dulce, stated that they ate pizza with pineapple – which he at the time declared a delicacy, and presto-chango, pineapple pizza was born. That, my friends, was the real cause of WWII. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY actually likes pineapple on pizza.
jvb
“Hepburn was raised in a wealthy family among the Dutch aristocracy; her mother was a baroness, her father a wealthy oil executive. “
You mean Audrey Hepburn was not the daughter of a chauffeur? Does David know?
Actually Roman Holiday is my personal favorite
Just saw it again last week. Written by Dalton Trumbo under a fake name while he was on the blacklist.
Call me a Philistine but the dresses are not dissimilar, though Ivanka appears to be going barefoot a lá “Sabrina.”
jvb
“She [Audrey] is the complete opposite of Ivanka’s silver spoon life,” read the comment of one lunatic. Typical ignoramus: Hepburn was raised in a wealthy family among the Dutch aristocracy; her mother was a baroness, her father a wealthy oil executive. But facts don’t matter to these nutcases.
Just who is an ignoramus concerning her upbringing? So her teenage malnutrition leading to serious illness doesn’t count the other way? Or is the fact of the Dutch Famine’s impact on her one that doesn’t matter? Furthermore, in that time and place, her “privileged” background put her at greater risk, as shown by her relatives being more likely to be selected for reprisals (one actually was).
‘Gotcha!” comments like that are not favored here. Hepburn went to private schools, went to a ballet academy, and did indeed have a “silver spoon” upbringing in a wealthy family. Hardly the “opposite” of how Ivanka was raised, except that she had to endure WWII, but then so did everyone else in Europe. The Dutch famine had nothing to do with her upbringing. And raising a contrived double binds like “Yeah, well, sure her family was wealthy, but that put her at risk, see, so it still was the opposite of Ivanka” is intellectually dishonest.
I view this as a bad faith comment.
Clearly, the message of this episode is: “If you’re straight or not a progressive Democrat, do NOT mess with a gay fashion icon. You will be called out and appropriately punished.”
The 24 Most Iconic Fashion Icons in Queer History | Grindr Guess who’s number one?