Back in 2004, Profiles In History auctioned off the famous Ascot dress from My Fair Lady. It was a pretty big deal all around, getting a good amount of press coverage and sending Audrey fans into a tizzy. The dress was expected to get a tidy sum, too (estimated at catching between $100,000 - $150,000). But before it was auctioned off and gone for good, board moderator Kendal and I took a trip to L.A. to see the dress in person. The storeroom was chock full of priceless entertainment memorabilia, all crammed inside a small, non-descript building. Since there's not a whole lot to say, here's the dress!

The dress, hat and parasol were all going together, which was nice. The hat is even larger in person than it seems on Audrey, believe it or not! If you look closely at the top of the dress, towards the neckline, that it seems a bit yellow. I was disappointed to see that the dress all over looked pretty yellowed. It's hard to tell if the dress is really white or an off-white in the film, so I'm unsure as to how much it has turned colour with age (if it has). The dress overall was in very good condition, but there were mends on the sleeves and around the waistline. The hat was also shedding its feathers on the black velvet, and I may have snagged one when the curator wasn't looking . . .

The hat and parasol looked in much better condition, mainly because it wasn't made of lace, which ages horribly. We were secretly dying to try everything on, of course, but we were watched very carefully, since this lot was one of the main draws of the latest batch of auctions. (Also up in the same batch of auctions were costume sketches for some of Audrey's outfits in The Unforgiven, but I didn't get any pictures of them.)

If you're wondering what's up with the mannequin in the wetsuit behind the Ascot set, it's actually a set of "Lost In Space" costumes that were going to be sold. As in, from the original TV show, not the fairly recent film remake. Seen from further away, the dress seems to look very long, doesn't it? Especially when you compare it height-wise to the mannequin. The neck of the dress about reaches its head! It was a very long dress, and after seeing it, I marveled at the fact that she was able to walk in that thing at all. As you can see from the top picture, the dress was scraping the ground when she wore it, and they've raised it a bit to keep the train from being trampled, since they had the dress right next to a doorway. But still.

A better representation of the size of the dress. I'm not a short gal, and my body measurements almost exactly match hers (except for that dratted 20 inch waist!), but good grief!

The dress sold at auction for $100,000, and Kendal was there to talk to the winner. He said that he had come into quite a bit of money recently and the dress lot was the first thing he'd bought. He had also expresed the wish to use this dress as the cornerstone to a museum he wanted to open. I don't remember now if it was to be a movie memorabilia museum or an Audrey-specific museum now, but there you have it!