je ne sais quoi: The Feminine Ideal

In Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit: a Son Remembers  Sean Hepburn Ferrer included an appreciation piece the brilliant photographer and visual consultant Cecil Beaton wrote about his mother's classic public appeal.

Sean writes:

So much of who she was, of what made her unforgettable, cannot be put into words. So how did she affect people so profoundly?  What chord did she touch? -- It wasn't just the brilliant packaging or the simple yet moving themes of her films.  It wasn't just the talented screenwriters and directors.  It was also what the French wisely call je ne sais quoi ("I don't know what") that came across in between the lines of good dialogue.  It was the speech of her heart and the inflection of pure intentions.

Nobody ever looked like her before World War II; it is doubtful if anybody ever did, unless it be those wild children of the French Revolution who stride in the foreground of romantic canvases.  Yet we recognize the rightness of this appearance in relation to our historical needs.  And the proof is that thousands of imitations have appeared... What does their paradigm really look like?  Audrey Hepburn has enormous heron's eyes and dark eyebrows slanted towards the Far East.  Her facial features show character rather than prettiness: the bridge of the nose seems almost too narrow to carry its length, which flares into a globular tip with nostrils startlingly like a ducks bill.  Her mouth is wide, with a cleft under the lower lip too deep for classical beauty, and the delicate chin appears even smaller by contrast with the exaggerated width of her jaw bones.  Seen at the full, the outline of her face is perhaps too square; yet she intuitively tilts her head with a restless and perky asymmetry.  She is like a portrait by Madiglioni where the various distortions are not only interesting in themselves but make a completely satisfying composite...

Audrey Hepburn is the gamine, the urchin, the last Barnardo boy.  Sometimes she appears to be dangerously fatigued; already, at her lettuce age, there are apt to be shadows under the eyes, while her cheeks seem taut and pallid.  She is a wistful child of a war-chided era, and the shadow thrown across her youth underlines even more its precious evanescence.  But if she can reflect sorrow, she seems also to enjoy the happiness life provides for her with such bounty.

It is a rare phenomenon to find a very young girl with such inherent "star quality."  As a result of her enormous success, Audrey Hepburn has already acquired the extra incandescent glow which comes as a result of being acclaimed, admired, and loved.  Yet while developing her radiance she has too much innate candor to take on that gloss of artificiality Hollywood is apt to demand of its queens.  Her voice is peculiarly personal.  With its unaccustomed rhythm and sing-song cadence on a flat drawl, it has a quality of heartbreak...

In fact, with the passing of every month, Audrey Hepburn increases in dramatic stature.  Intelligent and alert, wistful but enthusiastic, frank yet tactful, assured without conceit and tender without sentimentality... Add to this the remarkable distinction she emanates, and it is not rash to say she also  gives every indication of being the most interesting public embodiment of our new feminine ideal.

- Audrey Hepburn by Cecil Beaton, Vogue, November 1, 1954