For good reason, people ask me regularly why I love Audrey Hepburn so much. I feel very rationally about my love for her, so I have less of a visceral reaction than when people ask me, for example, why I love Beyonce so much (to be fair, they have stopped asking me this so often, which they should, and good for them/thank you)  or even why I love Ariana Grande so much, which I have been developing a thesis on, so if you see me, ask me (although we need to talk about cultural appropriation). As far as Audrey is concerned, I feel like answering this question is pivotal to even doing this project.

Someone asked me if she is known for her cooking? No. She basically just was a mother and a human and had to eat sometimes, so here is a book full of her recipes, written by her son, for a population that just loves to love her. I found it at Anthropologie, of course, and had to have it for Christmas that same year.

I was trying to trace my adoration for her back to my earliest memories. I can honestly say that there isn’t one time  that I can point to where I really decided to just be obsessed with Audrey Hepburn. But in looking back, it makes perfect sense. I remember one time we had a typhoon day (read: snow day for North American listeners) and I think that we maybe watched both Roman Holiday and Charade in the basement of our best friends’ house. That was formative for me, it’s fair to say. Even then, I can’t say what exactly it was that drew me to Audrey herself. Oh, there was also the summer when we went on one of our Canadian family reunion camping trips and watched My Fair Lady at the beginning of it, and then sang “Wouldn’t It Be Lovely” variations throughout the road trips to Kananaskis and back. Those are my earliest memories of Audrey. Past that, I can’t really explain to you what happened, except that I got an Audrey Hepburn coffee book some time in high school and it was one of the things I brought to college with me. And I remember watching Breakfast At Tiffany’s and being both shocked and moved (two things I still am every time I see it). I also went to Tiffany’s on 5th Avenue with my bestie when we were sophomores in college, just for the photo op. So I think it’s safe to say that my love for Audrey traces back to the amorphous time when I was in high school in America and really searching for what I was going to pin my identity to, as the new kid in America who felt new even in her own skin. I used to shop at the Gap a lot during this time, watch cooking and lifestyle public television on Saturdays while I did my chores, shop for décor at estate sales, bake a lot of cakes, and do other things that were way inappropriate for my age. 

Why still Audrey? you might be asking. I want to acknowledge that a love of Audrey doesn’t serve much at this time. Audrey Hepburn popularized the gamine type (I’ll get into that later, maybe), demonstrated a typical white savior complex in her advocacy with Unicef, survived the Holocaust, won an Academy Award very early in her career, and consistently starred alongside romantic counterparts 20+ her age in years. She doesn’t represent much that is relevant or pressing at the moment. And I have to say, as a person who has always had a boyish figure and is now learning what it’s like to let that go, or someone who has wrestled with being ladylike and crass, and someone who is interested in centering black, indigenous, people of color in popular spaces, Audrey Hepburn is just still somehow my people. She’s a 9 on the Enneagram, like me. She made movies that are sweet confections, plus ones that were hard to make and watch, and ones that seamlessly straddle the line. I’ve always had a soft spot for well-made romantic comedies, and I’ve always loved watching movies that do not necessarily feed the masses’ desires. She made all of those. She was a prolific and variegated talent, one of a few actors, let alone people, to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. So I feel like even though her talent and body of work is not pertinent to today’s age, and even though I still feel that there are more important artists and activists to be consuming than either her or me, this is just what makes the most sense to me. It’s what I get excited about and it’s what I’m able to write 767 words about with no sweat. I’m still unlearning racism, I’m still trying to uplift, honor, and center black femmes, I’m still using my time on Instagram to get familiar with uncomfortable topics, but here’s what I’m drawn to in this moment: it’s Audrey Hepburn’s quite mediocre but familiar recipes, and it’s my desire to take on a project that combines both my culinary and literary passions while drawing closer to a figure who is no longer with us but whose art is still alive and well.

Thank you for reading! I’m excited to be getting this project off the ground, onto the site, and out of my head.