This month’s cover and fashion photo editorial for Harper’s Bazaar is proof that beauty and talent can be genetic. Emma Ferrer, the granddaughter of the elegant Audrey Hepburn, is featured on the cover and inside the fashion magazine this month. She was captured in photos by none other than Michael Avedon, the grandson of legendary photographer Richard Avedon, who himself took some of the most iconic photos of the late, gamine actress.

Hepburn and Avedon

Hepburn’s granddaughter and Avedon’s grandson, Emma Ferrer and Michael Avedon, reprise their famous ancestor’s roles as Muse and Photographer for this month’s Harper’s Bazaar.

In this post I am sharing the images of Emma featured in the fall issue of the magazine along with side by side comparisons I created of Audrey Hepburn photos by Richard Avedon so you can compare both the beauty of the women as well as the beauty of the photography.

Harper’s reports from their interview with the granddaughter of the swan-necked star of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sabrina: “Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer, Audrey’s first grandchild, was born in Switzerland in May of the following year to Sean and his then wife, Leila. Now 20, Emma is the eldest of Sean’s three children and spent most of her adolescence in and around Florence, Italy, where Sean, who runs an agency that deals with intellectual property and is also a filmmaker and keeper of the Audrey flame, lives outside the city. (Luca, his wife, and their daughters occupy his mother’s former apartment in Rome.). 

On his father’s side, 23 year old Michael is the grandson of the late Richard Avedon, one of the most famous photographers of the last century. On his mother’s side, Mr. Avedon is the grandson of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the most famous senators of the last century. As a child, Mr. Avedon and his paternal grandfather actually didn’t discuss photography all that much. “I was young when he passed — 12 or 13,” he said. “So my memories are vague. I just remember him as a loving grandfather. He would take me and my brothers to the theater.”

After a brief stint at the School of Visual Arts, Mr. Avedon switched to the International Center of Photography from which he graduated and began finding work assisting other photographers. Michael struck out on his own as a photographer in 2011 and had his first fashion spread in V Man, the fashion magazine edited by Stephen Gan in March of 2012. Later that year he had another in Carine Roitfeld’s new magazine, CR Fashion Book, a lush six-page spread in which the models were done up as babies. Now, working primarily in black and white 35mm medium format film, he has comprised a portfolio of portraits of artists, models, creators, politicians and relatives.

The Harper’s Bazaaar interview continues on to say: “Muse” is an overused word these days, but that’s exactly what Audrey was for the legendary photographer Richard Avedon. She was, in a word, his inspiration, and their interaction played out over a number of years in the 1950s in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar. Avedon photographed Audrey on the streets of Paris, in fashion stories, and several times as a cover subject for the magazine. Even though he worked with some of the biggest models of all time—Suzy Parker, Dorian Leigh, Carmen Dell’Orefice—he was completely enamored with Audrey as a subject, and she loved sitting for him.

above: some examples of photos of Audrey Hepburn by Richard Avedon

Avedon, of course, was memorably fictionalized in the 1957 movie Funny Face. Though he didn’t appear in the film, he served as an adviser. The part of the photographer, Dick Avery, was played by Fred Astaire. Audrey was cast as Avery’s muse—the mousy but promising bookstore clerk who, under his tutelage, blossoms into a glorious supermodel in Paris.

Today Emma is four years younger than Audrey was when she appeared in 1953’s Roman Holiday, a breakout performance for which she won an Oscar. Emma herself has no designs on acting, though, like her grandmother, she has studied ballet. Instead, Emma’s heart is set on becoming an artist. To that end, she is entering her third year as a student of the Florence Academy of Art.

The covers for the fall issue of Harper’s Bazaar by Michael Avedon:

Photographs of Emme by Michael Avedon; Fashion Editor: Joanna Hillman

Read the full interview in Harper’s Bazaar with Emma Ferrer here