What girl doesn’t want to be Audrey Hepburn? She was thin, sophisticated, had a great jawline and angel eyes.

For my senior event, I decided I was going to wear my little black dress. It has an Audrey Hepburn-y feel to it, just by it’s simplicity. She was known for wearing simple dresses with class, and usually black ones.

You’d be happy to know I found a way of taking pictures of myself. Finally. I just couldn’t remember for the longest time how to do a self-taking timer thing on my camera.

So I was inspired to create a look like hers.

The night before my event, I stayed up until midnight researching how to do hair and makeup to look like her.

It was quite an experience, I’d have to say. Haha. I came across some very interesting videos. Starting with a model who looks awkward/miserable/about to cry/constipated/about to fall asleep/about to throw up/or maybe trying not to bust up laughing? I couldn’t figure it out, which is probably why I watched the video ’till the end. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzNJzytI1fQ)

Then there was a guy, who was kinda cool because he actually didn’t use any pins, he does hair by sewing it up. But I don’t know how I’d feel about that, what if he lost the needle or it gets stuck in my scalp or something. (Ps, he actually did lose the needle in his model’s hair.) But what first struck me about this guy was how ROUGH he was being with his model. He was yanking her hair all over the place. I mean, she had gorgeous thick her but still. OUCH. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmrkHGwPjKg)

Anyhow, I think it was this one helped me the best.

The makeup world wasn’t quite as adventurous, but I did watch a video by a woman who spoke, I’m guessing, Italian the whole time. That made me feel very cultured, and I realized you don’t really need to understand what they’re saying (probably because I don’t understand what they’re saying, even in English), you just have to watch. Which I did. She was being all rough on her skin. I thought you’re supposed to be gentle with the eyes and under them (question: why is this true? I don’t understand. Everyone says it’s sensitive? What does that mean?), well she was smudging pretty hard and for very long periods of time to get it thoroughly rubbed in or something (looked fine to me, but what do I know), so the video was kind of boring. And then she got to the eyeliner stuff. Ooh I shudder just thinking about it. She got white and lined the INSIDE of her eye! Oh gosh, I couldn’t take it, she was rubbing all around. Yeesh. . I quickly moved on from that. I can’t believe she wasn’t crying. I practically was. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0Xx3AHTYU)

So, after that disturbing scene, this video was my favorite. I liked this girl’s personality too, she seems pretty down to earth. Hmm, I’m not really good at accents. But, Irish? (By the way obviously, I didn’t have or use her exact products. I just used what I have.)

I started with my hair, since I’m really bad at hair and that would take the longest. A tip for those who try this — I don’t know what you’d call it, wrap bun? No idea. . I’ll try again. A tip for those of you who try this hairstyle: all you do is brush the hair (for the bun, not for the poof or bangs or anything) from one ear toward the other, then like tuck-twist it in at the middle of your head. This part took me a pathetic while, because, after I had pinned the top, to be teased, and my bangs out of the way to work on later, I was left with all this hair and realized I hadn’t payed enough attention to the tutorials to understand what to do with it. I tried twisting it then pulling it up, but obviously that’s not what you’re supposed to do. So I’ll just give you that little tip in case you’re like me. Doing it might help you center the twist better too. Mine was curving away and off from the center, but I left it like that so I wouldn’t be late. It wasn’t THAT bad, anyway.

Once I twisted the hair all the way to the top, I made a little spiral bun under where the poof would be and pinned it in place, a kind of natural bump-it as Mr. Hair Sewer guy said. It was a smidgen off-centered, if I remember correctly, so I had to compensate by more teasing on the flat side. But I teased the heck out of the top part (gosh, teasing is incredible, it really does create volume!), except for the layer that would go on top so that would be smooth to cover the tangles, then I collected it all into a nice poof that went over the first spiral and twisted the tail end of that into another spiral bun that would sit right on the top of the twist that went up the back of my head. Hopefully that all makes sense. You can mostly see by the picture.

When I got my hair relayered, the hair stylist gave me bangs to work with, which really helped this look. (If you don’t have bangs, the video with the weird-emotions model kind of shows how to make bangs out of nothing.) I used a small barrel brush to blow dry my bangs, and had them clipped to the side to coax them into a side part (they have a mind of their own). Then I flat ironed them to the side and held them in place with a clip for them to cool until I realized I was getting a crimp mark and took the clip out.

Then I was very liberal with the hairspray. I even hairsprayed once I got there and got out of the car. Just for good measure.

I just realized I didn’t take any pictures of the make-up. But I made it really simple. I just colored in my eyebrows, lined my top eyelids with black, maybe slightly on the bottom (I quickly look like a racoon), and lined the inner corners with white. Then I used my NYC brown eyes thing, and did the lids brown and used a small brush to apply the burgundy-ish color to the upper creases just slightly, fanning out a bit at the upper corners more. Oh, I smeared on foundation and concealer too. Then I just used the Applelicious on my lips, curled my eyelashes, and applied mascara.

These pictures are from after the event, so my hair stayed in place pretty well.

For accessories, pearls were a given. It’s just an Audrey Hepburn thing. The sunglasses (Forever 21 $5.80 isn’t so bad) and my pretty little black pouch bag finished it off.

I actually took a picture of my camera screen. Hopefully it comes out okay.

 

Here’s a pic without the sunglasses, shows the doe-eyed makeup a bit more.

For the event, we went to watch a live production at the theater. While we were waiting for our group leader to get the tickets, a man running one of the tables called out to me, “you look like Audrey Hepburn.” I tried to be as humble as I could when I told him that was the look I was going for. “You definitely made it,” he said.

=-) Who’s ready to go to Tiffany’s?