Love it or hate it: A `Fair Lady' in Gap's skinny pants

She joins many dead colleagues -- Fred Astaire (Dirt Devil), John Wayne (Coors) and Humphrey Bogart (Diet Coke) -- in her posthumous marketing career.

The Gap spot is based on a clip from the 1957 romantic comedy "Funny Face." Hepburn plays a clerk in New York who is discovered by a fashion photographer (Astaire) and whisked off to Paris to take the fashion world by storm. (No stretch, really, given her real-life role as muse to the French designer Hubert de Givenchy.)

In the ad, Hepburn, in a black turtleneck and black pants, is shown leaping from her chair in a Paris nightclub, exclaiming, "I rather feel like expressing myself now. And I could certainly use the release." She starts a goofy Bohemian dance, then springs from the frame onto a white background as the AC/DC song "Back in Black" blares.

Some love the spot; some are appalled that a dead Hollywood icon is being used to sell skinny black pants. "The Gap should be ashamed of themselves," wrote one commenter on ThirdWay Advertising Blog. "It's a desperate attempt by a desperate company to align itself with someone classy."

"I wanted to like it," posted another, "but at the end was just too offended by the reincarnation of Audrey Hepburn as a pants salesman."

Gap, for its part, is happy just to be back on people's minds. For the last two years, the company has failed to excite customers who have fled elsewhere for inexpensive basics. Reviving a staple like the slim black pants, part of its new "Keep It Simple" campaign, could help revive Gap's sliding fortunes. "The worst thing a marketer can do is spend a lot of money and people are like, 'Oh well, another ad for Gap,' " said Kyle Andrew, Gap's vice president of marketing. "This is polarizing. Any time we can do anything that elicits passion is great."

Steven Levitt, who created Q scores, which measure name recognition and the likability of celebrities, said he thinks the choice of Hepburn is "excellent."