Lets Go to Paris! Oh, Kay! Dokey?

Now that Audrey Hepburn has become a branded trademark of the Gap, my mind has been set wondering. And that’s always just a bit dangerous, don’t you.

I starting remembering that in the last year’s of her life Audrey willingly let herself become the branded image of UNICEF and campaigning for the rights of children in the Global South. Now she has, without her permission, become the branded image for a company whose skinny black pants are made in those very same countries where she once visited with UNICEF. Now, I am not, for a second, suggesting that tiny under age hands are making those pants. But I can’t help but think what would Audrey think were she with us today.

Well, I think she’d suggest that the real star of Funny Face, Kay Thompson, should be the one promoting a brand. Kay who, you ask? Oh, Puh Lease, Eloise. If you don’t know who Kay is, then go ask Lypskina. Now Kay’s character in Funny Face was reportedly based on Diana Vreeland, but coming off this summer’s strongest female character in the Devil Wears Prada, one can’t help but think it was in many ways a non-musical version of the character Kay played five decades earlier. And wouldn’t Kay’s character be just tickled pink anyway to be lending her image to some crass form of commercial exploitation? The brassier, the better she would no doubt say.

So that’s why I crafted this little Let’s Go to Paris on Braniff with Kay Thompson commercial. Oops, what’s that you say, they’ve suspended those non-stop flight to Gay Paree?