In the summer of 1957, as a chubby, bursting-at-the seams 9-year-old, I boarded the Queen Mary with my family headed for Europe. Little did I know that Audrey Hepburn was also a passenger.

Our paths crossed once, as I remember, when as a special treat I got to visit my parents and grandfather during the second seating in the Verandah Grill (right). My mother must have pointed out La Bella Audrey, seated with others nearby. Her neck was incredibly long, her hair up, just the way she looked in the print ads for Givenchy’s fragrance, L’Interdit, which launched the same year (below). She wore a pale dress, as pale as her lipstick, which reminds me of the one seen here in a picture taken on board (left). I must have gawked. It’s an image I’ve never forgotten.

Audrey is on the cover of the May Vanity Fair and  Audrey in Rome, by her son, Luca Dotti, will be published later this month. In the book with many previously unpublished photos of  Hepburn, Dotti reveals that his mother never thought she was beautiful. But everybody else did.