Iconic look: Audrey Hepburn's black Givenchy dress in Breakfast at Tiffany's (film, 1961)

October 1960. Fifth Avenue, New York.

Audrey Hepburn, as Holly Golightly, stepped out of a taxi at dawn in a sleeveless, floor-length black satin dress by Hubert de Givenchy. It became perhaps the most famous little black dress of all time.

The film

Breakfast at Tiffany's (film, 1961) is a romantic comedy directed by Blake Edwards. It was adapted from Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella, 1958) by Truman Capote.

Audrey Hepburn played Holly Golightly, a carefree New York party girl who falls in love with a struggling writer, played by George Peppard.

The film won two Academy Awards, for its score by Henry Mancini and for the song "Moon River," by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. In 2012, the Library of Congress chose it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The opening scene was shot outside the Tiffany & Co. store on Fifth Avenue, during the film's New York location shoot in October 1960.

Holly Golightly got out of a cab on the empty avenue. She stood at the windows of Tiffany's with a pastry and a paper cup of coffee, gazing at the diamonds.

Her wardrobe for the film was designed by Hubert de Givenchy. Audrey Hepburn had first met him in Paris in 1953, when she was looking for clothes for Sabrina (film, 1954).

He was busy preparing his next collection, so she chose pieces from one of his past collections. Some of them became the most iconic outfits of her career.

But none of them reached the fame of the black dress Holly Golightly wore on Fifth Avenue.

The dress

The dress was made of black Italian satin. It was sleeveless and floor-length, with a fitted bodice and a wide bateau neckline across the front.

The surprise was at the back. There, the bodice was cut away below the shoulders, leaving the upper back bare.

Below the waist, the skirt was slightly gathered and fell straight to the floor. The line was long, slim and simple.

In the version made for the film, the skirt had no slit at all.

The accessories

Around her neck, Holly Golightly wore a necklace of many strands of pearls, made by the French jeweler Roger Scemama.

She added black opera gloves above the elbow, oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses, and a jeweled ornament in her swept-up hair.

On the poster, she also holds a very long cigarette holder.

The story

Givenchy made more than one copy of the dress. According to many accounts, the copies Audrey Hepburn brought back to Paramount showed too much leg for the studio.

So Edith Head, Paramount's costume chief, reworked the lower half. None of Givenchy's own dresses appeared in the film or in its publicity photographs.

The original hand-stitched dress stayed in the Givenchy archives in Paris. One copy is in the Museo del Traje, the costume museum in Madrid.

In November 2006, Natalie Portman wore one of the Givenchy dresses on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. She said it made her feel "very elegant."

"You can't possibly measure up to Audrey Hepburn," she added. "There's no comparison."

Hubert de Givenchy had given one copy to the French writer Dominique Lapierre and his wife, to raise money for their charity, City of Joy Aid.

On 5 December 2006, it was sold at Christie's in London. The auction house expected £50,000 to £70,000.

An anonymous buyer bidding by telephone paid £467,200. The money helped build schools for poor children in Calcutta, now Kolkata.

In 2010, a LOVEFiLM survey named it the best dress ever worn by a woman in a film.