Made for Audrey Hepburn for the 1961 classic Breakfast at Tiffanys, Irish bidders included William Doyle, CEO of Newbridge Silverwear, who went as far as £405,000 before being pipped to the post by "a mystery European" phone bidder.

There was much speculation over who the highflying bidder was.

Footballers' wags Victoria Beckham and Coleen McLoughlin are prime suspects . . . Coleen has a room in the Manchester mansion she shares with Wayne Rooney decorated as a homage to Hepburn. More fascinating than the identity of the new owner is that a secondhand garment . . . even a "vintage" one . . . can command such a high price.

But then, it was never just a sheaf of designer fabric fashioned by Givenchy into floor-length fabulousness that was for sale. It was what the dress personified to the buyer: a little piece of Audrey Hepburn, the most beautiful and the most stylish of them all.

Words such as "timeless", "elegant" and "sophisticated" are consistently used to describe the elfin actress's enduring appeal, but when she first lit up the world's screens in Roman Holiday Hepburn redefined what it was to be a Hollywood leading lady in the first place. Although she is considered "style" personified now, at the time nobody had ever seen a moviestar like her.

Pale-faced, gamine and skinny, she was the original waif: a wide-eyed, sprightly urchin in a sea of curvaceous beauties . . . a completely unlikely sex symbol when compared to her voluptuous contemporaries: Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe.

Hepburn, with her child-woman look and her spidery eyelashes rewrote the stylebook for a whole new generation.

From the pixie haircut, white shirts cinched at the waist, long skirts and ballet flats in Roman Holiday, to the sculpted boxy suits, shift dresses and hardcased handbags in Funny Face, to the slender ballgowns that won an Oscar for dress designer Edith Head in Sabrina, the Hepburn look has been much imitated . . .although never quite met.

Even though it could be argued that Hepburn's style was as contrived as that of her contemporaries . . . working with Hubert Givenchy throughout her career, she was always very specific about how she wanted to look . . . it was her fresh-faced, natural innocence which captured popular imagination.

The dress that sold this week stood for everything that was Audrey . . . a simple, effortless style that, despite the record price tag, money can't buy.