Harper’s Bazaar did something interesting for their September cover this year. Instead of using some huge star, celebrity or model, they chose a young woman named Emma Ferrer. She is Audrey Hepburn’s granddaughter (Emma is the daughter of Audrey’s son with her first husband Mel Ferrer, Sean Ferrer). Can you see the resemblance? I can, mostly in Emma’s jawline. That’s Audrey’s jawline. But for the most part, Emma is merely a pretty girl who is styled in variations of Audrey’s most famous looks/costumes, and they’re really trying to force the comparison. That must be difficult, having such an iconic grandmother and being asked to do your first magazine cover… but only if you dress up like your grandmother, whom you never knew because she passed before you were even born. Bazaar sat down with Emma to talk about Audrey (for the most part) as well – you can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

Emma’s family, her goals: 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… 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.

She spent part of her childhood in LA: “Growing up there felt entirely normal, since I was only a child,” Emma recalls, although she admits that had she remained in L.A., she might well have become that dreaded Hollywood brat. “I know kids who had to go into rehab,” she tells me. “It’s only now that I realize certain elements of a Hollywood lifestyle are, in fact, not entirely healthy.”

Emma the artist: “I always drew and liked to take art lessons, but I needed intellectual skills to learn about balance and structure.” She showed me some of her drawings on her iPhone: charcoal portraits and sketches of human figures and plaster casts, all done from life. She listed some of the painters she admired—Rembrandt, Titian, Velázquez, and Zurbarán—and talked about learning to imitate the work of other artists. “At first I resisted the process of copying because I felt it wasn’t original. But the truth is, I drew in a very naive way.”

Thinking about Audrey: “I’ve been questioning a lot lately what she means to me. I knew her image, of course, and that I happened to be, by pure chance, related to her. But as a child I couldn’t really relate to Audrey Hepburn, the actress. To me, she was family. I can live with her through my father. His stories are all about his growing up. But honestly, I haven’t seen all of her movies. When I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I enjoyed it the same way any young girl would. I’ve seen My Fair Lady and Roman Holiday, but I suppose my favorite is Funny Face.”

What she has to remember her grandmother: “All I can think of are her cashmere turtlenecks, which I adore and wear all throughout the winter,” she says. “And a white antique stuffed teddy bear.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

I like that Emma doesn’t want to be an actress or a model and that she seems more interested in studying art and living the life of an artist rather than the life of a Hollywood brat with a famous lineage. I think that probably comes from growing up, for the most part, in Italy and Switzerland. Plus, if you read the full piece, you can see that she’s very close to her father and that he’s steered her away from Hollywood. So… I do have to wonder why anyone agreed to this cover.

Photos courtesy of Michael Avedon/Harper’s Bazaar.