16 Vintage Photos of Audrey Hepburn’s Idyllic Summertime Style
From gingham capris in Italy to white sundresses in Switzerland, here’s how Audrey Hepburn dressed during summer.
Reported by Vogue.
There is resort wear, and then there is Audrey Hepburn on a boat in Switzerland wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat like she invented the concept of leisure. According to Vogue, the actress's warm-weather wardrobe was where her style truly unlocked — less red-carpet architecture, more lived-in confidence. And the archive proves it.
The references are specific and worth stealing: oversized sunglasses on holiday in Antibes, gingham capris during downtime with then-husband Mel Ferrer, a cinched-waist skirt while eating gelato with Gregory Peck on the Roman Holiday set. None of it feels costumed. It feels chosen — the way real personal style always does. She was barefoot on a sailboat for Sabrina and somehow that, too, looked like a moment.
The Swiss Chapter
A significant portion of Hepburn's off-duty life — and by extension, her off-duty dressing — was anchored in Switzerland. She and Ferrer married at the chapel of Bürgenstock Resort in Lucerne in 1954 and lived on the estate at Villa Bethania. Later, she settled in the Swiss town of Tolochenaz in an 18th-century farmhouse called La Paisible, which Vogue photographed for its 1961 issue. Between sets and press tours, she was gardening, playing golf, and existing against a backdrop of the Alps with the kind of effortless ease that no stylist can manufacture. The lavender-bordered lunch table at La Paisible is frankly aspirational.
What makes the archive so compelling isn't nostalgia — it's specificity. Hepburn wasn't doing "summer style" as a concept. She was just dressed, beautifully, for the actual life she was living: a vineyard in Italy circa 1955, a Seine boat ride in Paris in 1962, a horse farm in Toledo. The clothes move with her. Nothing is performing.
The real lesson from Hepburn's summer wardrobe isn't the hat or the capris — it's that the most magnetic style has always come from dressing for where you actually are, not where you want to be seen.
Read the original at Vogue.
