Minimalist Queen: How Marilyn Monroe Dressed Off-Screen

 Later this year, a new biopic, Blonde, will be released on Netflix, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe. Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel of the same name, Blonde is a fictional account of the two lives of a woman born Norma Jeane Mortenson who will forever be celebrated as Marilyn. Seen reductively, Norma Jeane was the California sweetheart, smiling happily on the beach, her hair falling in soft curls around her face, wearing a sweater and slacks. Marilyn, by contrast, was the sex-pot, the vamp, the one who wore nothing to bed but Chanel No 5 and serenaded JFK while sewn into a flesh-coloured Jean Louis dress glistening in rhinestones.

Yet while Monroe’s dresses have become some of the most revered fashion items in history, in truth, the actor was no clotheshorse. Her image may have been carefully crafted and precisely exercised – both by herself, and the studios that directed her – but clothes were merely a vehicle for Marilyn. While she wore pieces by the American designers James Galanos and Ceil Chapman and had a number of favourite looks by Lanvin, Monroe never cultivated a powerful relationship with a fashion designer in the way that Audrey Hepburn did with Hubert de Givenchy, which is perhaps indicative of her attitude to style in general. It was something to be used as a tool rather than passionately feted.

On screen, Monroe’s presence was largely crafted by costume designer William Travilla, who frequently worked with Twentieth Century Fox on its blockbuster productions. It was Travilla who created the dresses that the legend of Marilyn is most closely associated with: the pink strapless dress in which she performed “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”; the red slashed-to-the-thigh spanglers worn by both Monroe and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); the daringly low-cut gold pleated lamé dress from How To Marry A Millionaire (1953); and, of course, the white halter neck from The Seven Year Itch (1955).

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