Doris Brynner: The Glamorous Life Behind Audrey Hepburn’s Best Friend

My mother is determined, engaging, fun, critical at times, very precise, relentless, committed, and a great friend. She was born in Zagreb and grew up in Chile and came to Paris, which was her dream life, in the 50s. Paris post-war was really amazing and thanks to the connections she had and to the people she was socializing with, she got exposed to incredible artists, fashion people, and that's where she first met Pierre Cardin. She worked jobs here and there. She was not really made to be a model, but she ended up helping Pierre Cardin. She had a brief passage at Chanel and little by little was dressed by many people because of her beauty. I have memories of my mother getting dressed and learning what couture was because when she would put a couture dress, whether it was a Balenciaga or a Givenchy dress, I would have to help her close it. And as I learned at that very early age, what makes the big difference of a garment in couture is its structure. So the tiny little clips, the zipper, the second layer of clips, the corsets, the structure was really just so amazing and she shared a lot of stories, which is also why I was able to put this collection together, of the origins of things and the importance of things and her love for beauty was one that didn't spare any detail of her life. My parents, Doris and Yul Brynner, were just one of these amazing couples. They met at a ball in Paris, it was a mad love affair and she brought what she had learned from her Paris era in terms of taste and style and he was already very stylish and quite sophisticated and their passion was just one for the books. He was at the top of his career, went from movie to movie, he was already an Oscar winner, she was this great beauty and in between films they really lived this life of social and home. They invited friends, artists, social connections, she had great dinners and it was quite casual, people came for the weekend and when they went out they were the wow moment because of their style and their beauty. So part of my mother getting dressed, once the dress was on, was the jewelry. They were very well picked, very particular and they all had a story. So she had a very close friendship with Jean Schlumberger after becoming a client and both her and my father cultivated that friendship outside of the business that they did. So we have the most incredible Mino Dier, we have beautiful earrings, very special pieces of Schlumberger when he was based in Paris. As she separated from my father, she spent a lot of time in some arts in the winters and that's where she met Andy Warhol and that friendship began. So in the collection we have these incredible Polaroids and we have fantastic Andy Warhol books signed to Dara's, but she was really one to promote Andy and to promote his art. That's where she started really that skill of putting artists and business and collectors and making great connections for people. When my mother first went to Hollywood, when my father, one of the first people that she met was Audrey Hepburn. It was at the time of or close to the release of My Fair Lady and they had this joke. My mother's nickname for Audrey was square because she felt that her face was perfectly square. So every note that came back from Audrey was a square with a little face and Audrey had moved to Switzerland. When my parents separated, she helped my mother find a piece of land that was within a few yards of her house. So they were not only best friends, but they were also neighbors. So it was very touching when Audrey passed away that she left my mother this incredible Bulgari brooch. After her divorce, she had to work and what she loved was home. She had found gadgets and things that she really liked for home decor in America and she decided to bring them to Europe. So her very first business was called La Veranda and it was a fantastic store that she had in Gstaad and and in Geneva where she sold things for the home and she had developed a very keen sense of style herself both for her own appearance and for her environment. After she had La Veranda, she was approached by Peter Marino, the famed architect, to come and create a home decor section at the famed Christian Dior Avenue Montaigne store. She was a very hard worker. She was very detail-oriented. The setup was that there were shelves and in the shelves were objects but in the center of the room were tables that were always set up as if people were arriving for dinner and she would do the same thing at home, like getting ready for friends who came to dinner. I helped often do this and it wasn't necessarily over-the-top fancy. It was comfortable, it was cozy, it was warm, it was colorful and it was pretty. I grew up in this incredible environment where not only amazing people came, obviously you know Audrey Hepburn being her best friend, Elizabeth Taylor, and you'll see pieces in the collection that were left by these incredible women to my mother. And of course I remember every object because there was a story behind every object. She was not somebody who just accumulated possessions. She cherished them and she kept them and she positioned them and she valued them. So in her choices of bags, clothes, shoes, scarves that are in part of this collection, it very much shows the portrait of somebody who is somewhat understated.