From the 1940s-inspired fashion to her incredibly slim waistline, Ariana Grande has perfected the gamine look of Audrey Hepburn so impeccably that she is fast becoming a modern day replica of the Breakfast At Tiffany’s star.
During her Wicked press tour, the star has worn a raft of outfits that look as if they could have come straight from Audrey’s wardrobe, but more alarmingly fans have expressed their concerns over the 31-year-old’s painfully thin frame.
Audrey famously played Holly Golightly, Sabrina and Eliza Dolittle and Ariana would not be the first to try to channel her iconic style.
Her appearance, however, has sparked fears that rather than a playful nod to one of her icons through fashion, Ariana is going too far in her pursuit of emulating the star.
For while Audrey is remembered as one of the most glamorous women of the 20th century, the truth of her life beyond her fame is extremely complicated, from childhood trauma and starvation to her life-long feeling of being lonely and unloved.
Audrey, who was born in 1929, suffered from childhood malnutrition while growing up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during WWII, which stunted her growth and permanently affected her frame.
Speaking about her 2019 biopic British film director Helena Coan told Harpers Bazaar that women should not try to emulate the star’s body type.
‘It was important for me to tell audiences that Audrey was so skinny because she starved,’ she said. ‘If you look at pictures of her before the war, she looked totally different. Her body is not something you should aspire to have; she ended up that way because she didn’t have a choice – as a result of tragedy.’
Ariana’s fans have likened her style to Audrey Hepburn’s including the silk wedding dress she wore for her nuptials to now ex husband Dalton Gomez (left). Audrey Hepburn in the 1957 film Funny Face (right)
For the Paris Olympics opening ceremony Ariana wore a custom Thom Browne dress and white gloves (left) inspired by a dress Audrey wore in the film Paris When It Sizzles (right)
In the movie, Hepburn wears a dropped-waist gown with a full skirt and high neckline similar to Ariana’s wedding dress
She added that the actress, who died from cancer of the appendix in 1993, wanted to ‘change everything about herself’ despite being regarded by many as the ‘most beautiful woman that ever lived’.
‘She wished she was blonde and that she had a fuller figure,’ said Coan.
Audrey was born in Brussels, Belgium, in May 1929 her parents – Englishman Joseph Ruston and Dutch baroness Ella Van Heemstra – were both fascist sympathisers.
Her father walked out on the family when Audrey was six years old, and her mother sent her to England where she spent time as a private school pupil in Kent and lived with a local family.
After the Second World War began, her mother fatefully opted to take her back to Arnhem in The Netherlands, just before Nazi Germany invaded the country.
Audrey and her family had to resort to eating food made from tulip bulbs to survive the ensuing famine, which killed as many as 20,000 people.
She was rescued by UNICEF agents who pulled them from a basement at the end of the war, but was left seriously ill with jaundice, anaemia, oedema, and a respiratory infection.
After making a recovery she moved to London and tried to become a ballerina after winning a scholarship to the Ballet Rambert in Notting Hill, but was told because of the malnutrition she suffered, her weak constitution and height meant she would not succeed.
Ariana has previously spoken of her love for Audrey and in 2010, she tweeted that Breakfast At Tiffany’s was her favorite movie
Ariana wore a similar strapless dress to Audrey at the 2024 Met Gala
As an alternative she started acting, and appeared in West End musical – her background in muscial theatre being another parralel with Ariana, who started her career in the Broadway musical 13 as a child actress.
Despite her immense success, which say Audrey pull off the rare feat of winning the most coveted four awards in entertainment – an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony – she carried with her a deep sadness.
In one particularly emotional scene in the 2020 biopic, Audrey’s granddaughter Emma breaks down in tears as she explains: ‘My dad said about my grandmother that the best-kept secret about Audrey is that she was sad. It really makes me sad to think about. I really think she just wanted love, and to be loved.
‘I think she got that in her life, but I don’t think she got that from a lot of people. You know, for the woman who is most loved in the world to have such a lack of love is so sad.’
The root of this sadness can be traced back to the departure of her father when she was six years old.
‘I learned as a child it’s terribly important for a child to have a father. For having my father cut off, or he cut himself off, I was desperate,’ she said.
‘If I could have just seen him regularly, I would have felt he loved me, and I would have had a father.’
‘You become very insecure about affection, and terribly grateful for it, and you have an enormous desire to give it.’
The name change comes after the hitmaker and her estranged father have mended their relationship, after falling out of touch in 2013
In a never-before-heard interview featured in Audrey, the Hollywood actress can be hearding explaining how her father walking out on her when she was six left a ‘very deep mark’ on her’
Speaking of this snap of Audrey and her father, Sean said: ‘The photo is just a candid shot probably taken by her mother, but you can tell me how she adored him. Then he disappeared one day’
Hepburn was the daughter of Dutch baroness Ella Van Heemstra. Above: The mother and daughter in 1935
In 1964, after 25 years of total absence, Audrey expressed a desire to see her father.
‘Curiosity took over,’ Audrey explained in the film. ‘I wanted to know where he was, whether he was still alive. Through the Red cross I found where my father was – and that was in Ireland.’
But Audrey’s friend and photographer John Isaac said she was left upset following the reunion – despite still deciding to forgive him.
‘When she was telling me the story she was crying,’ he recalled. ‘She said he was so cold. He did not receive her – and she said that really hurt her.’
Audrey’s granddaughter Emma said: ‘She really felt throughout her whole life the lack of her father and I know that’s something she really struggled with.
Her looks on the Wicked press tour have been very Audrey-inspired (seen at the Sydney premiere)
New videos published on TikTok and X following the film’s London premiere on Monday night, sparked fresh concern over her health
‘That wasn’t really fixed through her relationships at all. There were many difficult times with the relationships she did have.’
Audrey’s first husband, Mel Ferrer was controlling and difficult, while her second husband Andrea Dotti cheated on her incessantly, which lef ther feeling insecure for life.
Ariana too has suffered her fair share of romantic heartache. She was married to real estate broker Dalton Gomez for three years, but the marriage ended in divorce in March this year.
Soon after their split became public she moved on to a controversial relationship with her current boyfriend and Wicked co-star Ethan Slater, who only recently split from his childhood sweetheart Lilly Jay, not long after the couple welcomed their first child.
Ariana doubled down on her shock split from Dalton by deleting all photos of their wedding from Instagram.
And in another parralel with Audrey, she too was estranged from her graphic designer father, who split from her mother, Joan, when the star was eight.
Eventually, the We Can’t Be Friends singer and her father fell out of touch and had became estranged by 2013.
As a result of their family dynamic, she chose to use her mother’s last name, Grande, professionally, although some people suspect her close bond with her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Grande, may have also played a role in the name change.
She described their falling out as ‘one of the hardest things’ she had to deal with.
‘It’s private… It took me so long to be okay with it,’ she told Seventeen magazine in 2014.
‘So much of me comes from my father, and for so long, I didn’t like that about myself. I had to accept that it’s okay not to get along with somebody and still love them.’
But in more recent years father and daughter have reconnected and appear to be on a much more positive path forward in their lives.
She would give fans a brief glimpse into her relationship with her father when it was on the upswing in a social media post of a throwback snap of her dad in 2017, writing, ‘I love you.’
As a result, she has changed her name back to her full birth name for the credits of her new film Wicked, which will read Ariana Grande-Butera.
It comes as for years Ariana’s fans have likened her style to Audrey’s including the silk wedding dress she wore for her nuptials to now ex husband Dalton Gomez, and her stylists on the Wicked tour have undoubtedly leaned into this aesthetic.
Over the years Ariana has taken inspiration from Audrey’s aesthetic and classic 1950s silhouettes – most notably with the wedding dress she wore to marry Dalton in 2021.
The pop star wore a custom silk Vera Wang number for the nuptials which took place in Montecito with just a small intimate ceremony.
Many compared the dress to the gown Hepburn wore in the 1957 film Funny Face where she played the role of Jo Stockton.
The film followed Maggie Prescott a leading fashion editor, and Dick Avery, a photographer who are intrigued by Jo (Audrey), a salesgirl at a bookstore, and try to introduce her to the world of fashion.
In the movie, Hepburn wears a dropped-waist gown with a full skirt and high neckline similar to Ariana’s wedding dress.
Ariana has previously spoken of her love for Audrey and in 2010, she tweeted that Breakfast At Tiffany’s was her favorite movie.
Elsewhere in a 2014 a New York Times profile she said she was trying to channel Audrey with her aesthetic when she released her 2013 debut Yours Truly.
For the Paris Olympics opening ceremony Ariana wore a custom Thom Browne dress inspired by a dress Audrey wore in the 1950s.
Audrey wore a very similar pink Givenchy dress in 1955 for Glamour magazine.
Fans have noticed she has always tried to emulate Audrey writing online: ‘Her obsession with old Hollywood and the vintage look was obvious before.’,
‘Omg I’ve been rlly noticing this!’,
‘She’s trying so hard to pull off the sophisticated, whimsical kind of beauty Audrey portrays.’
Ariana shocked fans this month after her appearance on the Wicked red carpet in Los Angeles.
With the singer’s petite figure on full display, some users took to social media to share their worries over her weight and slender frame.
But new videos published on TikTok and X following the film’s London premiere on Monday night, sparked fresh concern over her health.
Posing alongside co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey, the stunning star displayed slim shoulders, prominent collarbones, while her sternum was also visible.
‘I love Ariana and I don’t think people should comment on other people’s bodies at all, but there’s no way you can look at her and not think she’s not healthy,’ one user said.
Another wrote: ‘Ariana looks very fragile and not in a good way.’
A third added: ‘I know she has been slim all her life but seeing her now is worrying, she is so small.’
Experts have long warned that having a visible sternum and gaunter cheeks as an adult may be a sign of health conditions including malnourishment and lipoatrophy — the loss of fat tissue.
In an interview with the New York Times, both Ariana and Cynthia hinted at intensely pressured schedules on set, with both contracting Covid during filming.
‘We only got sick once each, but both were before some of the most important works of the whole movie — mine was the week before ‘Popular”, Ariana said.
‘I came to set with a mask on my final days of recovery to learn the hallway finale.’
When the actors’ strike forced production to a halt last summer, Cynthia also admitted she was ‘grateful’ as they had both ‘worked [themselves] to the bone’.
‘At first, it felt like an interruption, and then as it went on, it felt like the rest we needed’, she said.
‘We’d worked ourselves to the bone. I was really grateful,’
Last year, the Thank U, Next songstress clapped back at body shamers and insisted that she was healthier than ever after pictures comparing her weight over the years went viral.
In a three-minute long TikTok video, she said: ‘I just wanted to address your concerns about my body.
‘And talk a little bit about what it means to be a person with a body [that’s] seen and paid such close attention to.
Hollywood star and fashion icon Audrey who was born in 1929 had some of the most memorable outfits in modern history but behind the glamour had a tough life and childhood
‘I think we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what.
‘If you think you’re saying something good or well-intentioned, whatever it is — healthy or unhealthy, big or small, this or that, sexy or not sexy, we should really work towards not doing that as much.’
The Yes And? singer also claimed the version of her that people were comparing her to was the ‘unhealthiest version of her body.’
‘There are many different kinds of beautiful. There are many different ways to look healthy and beautiful,’ she stated.
‘And personally for me, the body that you’ve been comparing my current body to was the unhealthiest version of my body.’
She explained that she was ‘on a lot of anti-depressants’ and ‘drinking on them,’ which is usually not recommended because of dangerous interactions.
Ariana also admitted that she was ‘eating poorly and at the lowest point of her life’ when she looked the way her fans considered her healthiest.
‘I know I shouldn’t have to explain that, but I do feel like maybe having an openness or vulnerability, something good might come from it,’ she added.
‘Healthy can look different.’