Things

No One’s More Intoxicating Than an Icon       

The fact Katharine Hepburn kept – for 75 years – the crushed-velvet dress she wore on her wedding day suggests we don’t know her as well as we thought.

Her marriage to “Luddy” lasted six years, ending in a 1934 Mexican divorce. Was the gown simply so insignificant she forgot about it?

No, she mentions it in her memoirs.

So, was she a closet sentimentalist? A pack rat? A thrifty New Englander who reasoned she might recycle the gown for later nuptials if she gave the nod to suitor Howard Hughes or Spencer Tracy? If not, why didn’t she donate the designer dress to a museum, or the costume department of alma mater Bryn Mawr?

For whatever reason, she didn’t. And in 2004 some star-struck 21st-Century bride may have been the beneficiary. The embroidered Babani was one tiny part of a celebrity auction starring the personal belongings of an authentic woman-of-the-world.

Sotheby’s New York hosted the dispersal of the Great Kate’s things, from furniture purchased on location in Africa to Hepburn’s own artwork (reported to be, what else, remarkable). She even sculpted a bronze bust of Tracy, her tortured co-star in life and love scenes. It was included in the sale.

Imagine winning a Burberry trench coat or pair of trousers worn by the woman who took on both Jo March and Eleanor of Aquitaine. As for the wedding gown, Sotheby’s estimated it would finish at $2,500 to $3,500. Tsk-tsk, many modern fathers-of-the-bride were all too happy to add a zero to those paltry figures. (It sold for $27,000 – chump change compared with the bronze head Hepburn sculpted of Tracy: $316,000.)

Anticipation surrounding the sale of Hepburn’s property, which went on to fetch $5.8 million, rivaled the buzz before the worldly goods of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (her own BMW, JFK’s rocking chair), the Duchess of Windsor, and Marilyn Monroe (whose jeans Tommy Hilfiger purchased for $42,500) were exposed.

No one’s more intoxicating than an icon.

Director of Sotheby’s collectibles department, senior vice-president Leila Dunbar was steeped in Hepburniana when we caught up with her before the sale. “I feel like Nancy Drew,” said Dunbar, who didn’t imagine she could be any more wowed by Hepburn than she already was – but was.

She credited the star’s signature confidence and gusto for life to her upbringing in an accomplished family with tight-knit bonds and people who loved her. “How many actresses in the Thirties went to Hollywood  armed with a college education and such an enormous sense of security?” Dunbar asked.

“And who could argue with the American Film Institute ranking her the No. 1 actress of all time?” Dunbar said, pointing to unparalleled credentials: four Oscars, 12 nominations, and a film career spanning 1934-94. “But she was also the prototype of the modern woman, someone who stood up to life on her own terms; a great beauty and reluctant sex symbol who managed to maintain her true persona; a business woman ahead of her time who negotiated her own studio contracts …”

Those studio contracts – and canceled checks, glamour photos, driver’s licenses, rare autographs – were part of the sale. Reassuring news for all who held Hepburn in high esteem was word that the estate was huge, comprising roughly 700 lots. (The norm is 300 to 400.) A Renaissance woman who traveled extensively (you could purchase her Louis Vuitton luggage), ran three households (the Connecticut family estate, New York Turtle Bay townhouse, L.A. rental once shared with Tracy) and lived a long life (she died in 2003 at 96), she naturally accumulated a vast amount of “memorabilia.”

Having seen it all – the prolific Hepburn’s 100-plus pieces of artwork, her furniture, decorative objects, clothing, books – Sotheby’s Dunbar was asked for an impression: “Her joie de vivre permeates everything she touched.”

Personally I was concerned the competition would want what I wanted from the auction. Maybe Kate Mulgrew, who played Hepburn in a one-woman show, would want the witty Hirschfeld caricatures.

Cate Blanchette, after portraying her in Scorcese’s The Aviator (and Oscar-blessed for the effort), possibly pined for Howard Hughes’ gift of an Art Deco diamond brooch. (The Mauboussin jardiniere pin finished at a gulping $120,000.)

Journalist Cynthia McFadden, a close friend of Hepburn’s late in life, was likely after the manuscript of Hepburn’s memoir, “Me.” That would leave Me the press kit for 1938’s Holiday; or passport in the name of Katharine Ludlow; or address book with numbers for Tracy and Olivier; or purchase agreements for Woman of the Year; and of course the unique beauty’s long-time makeup mirror.

Just in case, I hedged my bets and ordered the $50 catalogue. Destined to become a collector’s item it