Audrey Hepburn answering journalists during a reception honoring her friend and fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy in Paris in 1991. [Photo/Agencies]

Imbued with a sense of nostalgia for the fashion of decades past, the collection nonetheless shows how the actress's style has remained remarkably fresh and contemporary. Hepburn knew how to bring her clothes to life through "her beauty, personality and lightness of spirit," Givenchy says.

In some ways it is also a homecoming, as Hepburn was the daughter of a British banker and a Dutch baroness, and had deep ties to The Netherlands.

After Hepburn was appointed in 1988 as a goodwill ambassador for the UN children's agency UNICEF, she would often give interviews wearing a simple silk or satin T-shirt. She told Givenchy recounting the horrors of war she had seen that "thanks to this small piece of silk, I feel protected because you are close to me."

At the end of her life, they were again united through a piece of material when he visited her at her home in Switzerland as she battled cancer.

Hepburn gave him a navy blue quilted coat urging him "when you are sad, wear this and it will give you courage."

"From Geneva to Paris, I wept in the jacket she had given me," he says, still overcome with emotion two decades after her death.

"Audrey will never go out of fashion. She is current. And her image continues to amaze us."

Agence France-Presse