The People Who Inspired My Style; From My Mother to Madonna (Part 2)

 In my last few posts I have been looking at fashion inspiration and thinking about who, over the years, has inspired me. Over the years my own personal style has remained relatively steady, in that I've not swung from being a goth to dressing like I work in a bank. There are definitely items in my wardrobe, that are 30 years old, and if they still fitted me, I'd still be wearing them! I've always loved the fashions of the '60s and '70s, and other than a brief interest in 1950s Americana when I was about 11 (think full circle skirts, ballet pumps and tight tops - I blame it on watching too many episodes of Happy Days), my style has always gone back to a love of those two decades, with a hefty pinch of whatever decade I'm passing through at the time. But how do we come to dress like we do? What informs our style?

1950s Happy Days style

When I was in the sixth form, I had a friend who would come in every day dressed in a completely different style. One day, she'd be full on decked out in hip hop gear - adidas tracksuits and big gold hoops, the next day she'd come in dressed as a Chelsea Queen in preppie Ralph Lauren with a jumper slung over her shoulders. Whatever style she chose she always perfected it to the minutest detail, and I always thought she rocked her looks. There was a lot of sniggering behind her back though - that she was 'inauthentic', 'dressing up' 'didn't know who she was'.  But when you think about it - isn't that part of growing up? We'll call her 'Alex' - Alex's experimentation to me was just her getting to know what she liked and expressing that through her fashion. Any anyway, isn't fashion meant to be fun?

And whose personality is that staid? One day you might wake up and feel like a rock star and dig out your PVC trousers and a t-shirt. Another day if the sun is shining and your serotonin flowing, you might want to wear something floaty and flowery. Equally eclectic and divergent are the style icons who influenced and informed my own style over the years. 

In part 1, I looked at 90s fashion icon Kate Moss and 60s rock god and his muse, Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson whose laid back rock'n'roll vibes influenced a generation. In Part 2, I will go back to the '80s, when Marilyn Monroe and Madonna were the strong female that inspired this young girl. And in the case of Marilyn Monroe, it's proof that it's not all about the clothes, but the unique and irreplaceable aura that she imbued.

Marilyn Monroe

When I say that Marilyn Monroe inspired my style, I don't mean that at age 12 I started bleaching my hair and wearing evening dresses to school, what I mean is that I was fascinated by her glamour, her aura, her iconic and immediately recognisable style. I would watch all her movies  - Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes being favourites - devour books on her, collect memorabilia - I even had an album of her songs. And it wasn't just me - many of my friends were equally obsessed. Marilyn Monroe is a right of passage for many young girls (and boys) growing up. She is a pop culture phenomenon. But she was also a fashion revolutionary in her time that still inspires today.

The influence she has had on popular culture is simply immeasurable. Like other legends of her time, such as James Dean and Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe fascinated the masses with her sensuous, glamorous good looks, and her classic movie star appeal.

Marilyn's at home style was much more laid back and classix

Whether it was due to her tragically young death,, her beauty, her work or her charisma, Marilyn’s legend extended far beyond the time of her passing, at the early age of 36. Films such as Gentleman Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, and How to Marry a Millionaire were among her most mainstream film roles, and they were also her most famous. She later appeared in hits like Some Like it Hot and Let’s Make Love and the Misfits, which further secured her historical spot on the Hollywood starlet map.

Marilyn essentially invented the bombshell. In the 1950’s when her career exploded, her image was viewed as vulgar and offensive by many. Her barely-there outfits, her breathy voice and blatant sexuality were seen as highly improper.

Monroe used it to her advantage, knowing full well that it would set her apart and get her more work. Little did she know it would totally transform American culture. Marilyn Monroe single-handedly made it OK to be sexually attractive. Her image has since become an icon of femininity and sexuality.

She embraced her curvaceous figure, highlighted her assets and minimised her flaws. In using her body as a tool, she mixed sex and fashion yielding the image we know today.

Marilyn Monroe’s style lessons extend further than how to wear figure-hugging gowns and platinum-blonde hair. The actress’s beguiling take on fashion altered Hollywood as she knew it: in an era of prim Peter Pan collars and stiff petticoats, she made it acceptable for women to embrace their own sexuality.

Monroe in her green Pucci dress

”She knew exactly how to get the effect she wanted with black jersey, fine silk-crepe or a solid nimbus of skintight sequins’‘ according to Meredith Etherington-Smith, ex-editor of Paris Vogue. She worked closely with some of the costume designers from her films to create looks for herself off-camera. She found little known designers and propelled them to fame by wearing their designs (Ferragamo, Gucci, Oleg Cassini, Emilio Pucci, etc.) She even stole ideas from other milieus and used them to her advantage, such as wearing a thong under a dress to eliminate panty-lines, after having seen the garments at a burlesque show.

She was a fashion visionary who brought body-conscious clothing to the masses. We owe her much more than we think, her influence is immeasurable.

Traces of her signature aesthetic can be glimpsed throughout the history of pop culture, with fans as illustrious as Madonna having imitated Monroe's style. For the singer’s Material Girl music video in 1984, she even replicated the strapless satin pink sheath and evening gloves worn by the starlet in the 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Whether it’s a shade of platinum, a bold red lip or a plunging neckline, countless celebrities continue to mimic Marilyn Monroe’s fashion, heightening their own sensuality in the process.

Marilyn’s ability to spot up-and-coming designers made her a fashion visionary.

Before they were household names, she wore Ferragamo pumps, carried Louis Vuitton bags, and donned the designs of Norman Norell, and Lanvin. On film, Marilyn was dressed exquisitely by Oscar-winning designers Jean Louis, Orry Kelly and William Travilla, who dressed Monroe in eight of her films.

Monroe’s eye for fashion was innate. She often adapted dresses to suit her shape, as well as to enhance her effervescent persona. After choosing an emerald green Norman Norell dress for the 1962 Golden Globes, she had a halter-neck strap attached to give her silhouette maximum impact.

“She [always] knew exactly how to get the effect she wanted with black jersey, fine silk crepe or a solid nimbus of skintight sequins’’, said Meredith Etherington-Smith, Paris Vogue’s former London Editor. 

Although Monroe sang about diamonds being a girl’s best friend, she rarely adorned herself in ostentatious jewellery, opting instead to let her dresses – and her shape – command the spotlight.

Renowned for favouring Emilio Pucci dresses and blouses, Monroe was often photographed in the label’s striking prints and shades. Yet it was a much-adored apple-green shift that exemplified her relationship with the fashion house.She even left explicit instructions to her long time make-up artist and friend, Allan 'Whitey' Snyder, to ensure she be buried in the dress and that he do her make-up as only he knew how.

 Travilla created some of the most recognisable movie costumes of all time for her. She became his muse and even for a brief time, his lover. “Marilyn has the most fantastically perfect figure in the world,” he told Screen Life in 1954. “No matter how you dress her, she looks sexy.”

Monroe in her knife pleat gold lame Travilla dress

Marilyn wore another creation by William Travilla at an awards reception when she was named ‘Fastest Rising Star of 1952’. As has happened in the past, her choice of attire overshadowed the event. The dress was made from knife-pleated gold lamé, with a halter neckline and style lines that are somewhat Egyptian.

The entire gown was created from ‘one complete circle of fabric’. The authors of Marilyn in Fashion, Christopher Nickens and George Zeno, write: “By twenty-first century standards, the dress seems tame (especially since the neckline had been altered upwards several inches for this event), but it was so tight Monroe had to be sewn into it. That, combined with her sexy walk, created pandemonium at the award presentation.”

“When she wiggled through the audience to come to the podium,” wrote columnist James Bacon, “her derriere looked like two puppies fighting under a silk sheet.”

One of her most recognisable looks is from a scene she shot in the film The Seven Year Itch. The famous image of Marilyn Monroe from the ‘subway’ scene, when the subway rattles beneath her, Marilyn stands over a vent that swirls her skirt around her waist. In Marilyn in Fashion, the authors write: “The photographic images from that night continue to be some of the most reproduced in history. The white halter dress she wore became an instant iconic fashion symbol. 

Monroe in her famous 'subway' dress

Paired with her blonde curls, bright red lipstick, dramatic eyelashes, and high-arched brows, Marilyn created a signature look all on her own, which she is still recognised for today. It is both classic and unique, and will forever be identified as “the” Monroe style.

The images from the subway shoot struck a nerve immediately upon publication and signalled Monroe’s ascension to pop culture queen. Even in the midst of the buttoned-down 1950s, few could resist the unique combination of creamy beauty, sexual allure, and playfulness that Monroe conveyed so naturally in this scene and the photographs it generated. (This shoot was one of the first in which a major star’s exposed panties were showing in mainstream studio publicity).”

Nowadays, overt sexuality in Hollywood and throughout pop culture is barely new nor exciting. But in the early 1950s, it was revolutionary for a woman to celebrate and accentuate her feminine shape. Without Marilyn Monroe’s style lessons, the landscapes of contemporary fashion and film wouldn't be the same.

Madonna's early 80s look was accessible and easily copied

Early Madonna

When it comes to stylish pop culture icons, few come close to Madonna. After all, if there could be one word to describe the singer, it would be “chameleon.” With a career that spans four decades, Madonna’s style has constantly changed with the times. In the process, she has created an endless list of trends among her loyal fans.

Madonna has packaged and repackaged herself many times during her lengthy and illustrious career. Her influence as a fashion leader has been consistent from the very beginning of her career. Her style has been watched and followed from the first moment she appeared on MTV. In my case, it was Top of the Pops.

Madonna incorporated punk-influenced styles, such as the heavy makeup, fishnet tights and rubber bracelets, which blurred the line between pop and rebellion, one of the keys to her phenomenal success. In 1984 Madonna blurred this line further as she shocked audiences by wearing a punked-up bridal ensemble with her signature 'Boy Toy' belt and writhed on stage to 'Like A Virgin'.

Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan

In her videos for 'Lucky Star' and 'Borderline' she wore her own version of punk-black miniskirt rolled down to expose her navel, mesh knit tank tops with her bra peeking through, black lace gloves, stiletto heeled boots, a 'Boy Toy' belt, armfuls of rubber bracelets, black leggings, crucifixes, teased hair with an oversized bow and heavy makeup. Madonna's look spawned 'Madonna wannabes' - of which I was one. Legions of mostly young girls who copied her accessible, fun, punk-but-girly style. The craze for the look was only heightened with her appearance in the Johnathan Demme movie she starred in with Rosanna Arquette - Madonna pretty much playing herself - 'Desperately Seeking Susan'. She spent most of the film wearing a lacy bra top under a beautiful black and gold embellished jacket (that I have spent nearly 40 years trying to find a replica of) , wildly accessorised with stacks of bracelets, lace gloves, a thick black hair bow, and strands upon strands of necklaces.

Madonna's Like a Virgin look

 Her bridal look from the 'Like a Virgin' video was similarly copied and a dressed down version of the look worn at the 1984 MTV Music Awards ceremony. She wore a white lace corset and 'bridal' ensemble accessorised with her 'Boy Toy' belt and strands of pearls. It was a controversial look at the time, but the song was so good, and accompanied with just the right amount of 'girly' and 'fun' that like her idol Marilyn Monroe before her, she countered the negativity with her charisma, and just the right amount of tongue in cheek to silence her critics .Her look permeated street styles of the mid-1980s. Her influence and the popularity of this 'early Madonna' look was  even copied two decades later when Britney Spears and Christina Aguillera paid homage to her look onstage, highlighting her legacy as an artist both musically and in fashion.

To a young girl in 1984, learning about fashion and clothes, Madonna's early style was a perfect introduction. This iconic, easily accessible, rebellious look created by Madonna was quick to catch on amongst teenagers across the world: Macy's created a 'Madonnaland' selling Madonna-licensed and -inspired fashion and Madonna-themed boutiques cropped up across the world causing the look to become a high street staple throughout the 1980s. Even other artists, such as Banarama, adopted this 'Madonna' style. 

 

Note the graffiti jean jacket, hair bow, trainers and stacked-up bangles in the picture above– just a few of her style staples, and for a young girl with no money, easy to copy. Her style early on was not the high end, cone bra, Jean Paul Gaultier designs of the 90s Madonna, but instead involved items that could be homemade, thrifted, crafted. It was a marketing coup, because her fanbase were able to emulate her look easily and cheaply, creating an army of dedicated young clones. Her early success wasn’t simply a result of her hit pop songs, it was also achieved through her bold, easily recreated fashion choices. Madonna's style was an eclectic, colourful, seemingly thrown-together urban look -  it was a look that would make her an icon for a new generation of youngsters.

Today, although her style is constantly changing, Madonna continues to both shock and inspire: she once said “I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.” Her iconic ‘80s look however, remains amongst her most recognisable and influential.

Part 3 available next week

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).

Read more here

Marilyn Monroe: The Naked Truth Part 3

‘Tomboy’ Marilyn on the set of  The Misfits, photographed by Eve Arnold

There was no greater publicist for Marilyn Monroe than Marilyn herself. She was able to manipulate her image to great effect. When she was on the threshold of global fame in Hollywood, Marilyn used her body to get where she wanted. In her own words, she summed up her approach: ‘As soon as I could afford an evening gown, I bought the loudest I could find. It was a bright-red, low-cut gown and it infuriated half the women in the room because it was so immodest. I was sorry in a way to do this, but I had a long way to go, and I needed a lot of advertising to get there.’

One of the most enduring images we have of Marilyn Monroe is a video taken several weeks before her death where she famously sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to President Kennedy at his birthday party at Madison Square Garden. Guests at the event  said her $6,000 dress was so tight she was sewn into it.  Documentary film maker, Patrick Jeudy, made Marilyn: The Last Sessions based on the book by Michel Schneider who narrates the film, based on Monroe’s tape recordings with her last psychoanalyst, Dr Ralph Greenson, before her death. Schneider comments in the film that ‘they didn’t understand, it wasn’t her dress that was her skin, but her skin that was a piece of flesh clothing. It was her skin that prevented her from being naked.’

The dress Marilyn wore to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to President Kennedy

In the documentary we hear Marilyn reveal to her analyst that she actually struggled with the medium of film, confessing to a fear of words. She muses: ‘with words it’s so hard, but it’s so easy for me with my body.’ She goes on to discuss her preference for photography as a medium of expression. Schneider says that when she felt low, she would call upon photographer friends to meet with her to take her picture. According to Schneider, she felt able to express difficult emotions through photography far more effectively, as there was no speech, no language to stutter over, only her image.

Photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt at home

The photographer Eve Arnold developed a lifelong friendship with Monroe. The two seemed to have a mutual understanding of each other as artists and shared a love of photography As a result, they formed a working partnership which produced some of the most memorable and mesmerising shots of Monroe. Arnold claimed in the 1987 documentary Eve and Marilyn: ‘ Over the years I found myself in the privileged position of photographing someone who I had first thought had a gift for the still camera and who turned out had a genius for it.’ Eve wrote: ‘I never knew anyone who came close to Marilyn in natural ability to use both photographer and still camera. She was special in this, and for me there has been no one like her before or after. She has remained the measuring rod by which I have – unconsciously – judged other subjects.’

Eve Arnold’s eerily prophetic shot of Marilyn on the set of The Misfits

Most actors are uncomfortable before the still camera, Arnold noted, but with Marilyn the opposite was true. ‘She didn’t have to learn lines as she did for her movies,’ Eve commented. ‘She could let her imagination range freely without concern for onsistency or continuity, she could be a different Marilyn for each photographer or each frame of film.’

Whereas in her film roles, Marilyn was often typecast as a ‘dumb blonde’, as a model ‘she could call the shots, dictate the pace, be in control.’ Even in her early ‘cheesecake’ poses, or with more experienced photographers like Eve’s old mentor, Richard Avedon, Monroe’s joyful, innocent persona transcended cliché. ‘No matter how the photographer tried to use her in terms of his own personality and style,’ Eve remarked, ‘it is always she who imposes herself to have the final look.’ Arnold commented that although candid shots of Monroe were almost impossible, Marilyn liked Eve’s looser, more informal, more intimate approach to photographing her – in stark contrast to the rigid, posed photographs of the studios.

But working with Marilyn presented unusual challenges. ‘A camera anywhere near her would bring out a mob,’ Arnold remembered, adding, ‘the idea of the candid shot was impossible with her. She always knew – as though, wherever she was, whether in a dressing room, resting on a plane or walking in the desert, her own built-in mechanism sensed the camera and responded before the first click was heard.’ Nonetheless, Monroe was at her most creative when being photographed. ‘If it is true, as some has said of her, that all her life she pursued a search for a missing person – herself –’ Arnold mused, ‘then perhaps Marilyn, a creature of myth and illusion, found herself not in the fleeting film image, but in the photograph, which would seem to give her concrete proof of her being.’ 

George Cukor, director of Something’s Got to Give, her final unfinished film, also commented on her fear of words. He stated that Marilyn ‘preferred to let her body do the talking’, she hated words so much. In fact, in the famous photoshoot which took place on the film’s set, where we see Marilyn nude in a swimming pool, it was in fact Marilyn who suggested being nude for the shots, not the photographer. Lawrence Schiller, the photographer on the set of Something’s Got to Give – reports that the reason behind this was that she was concerned about being paid less than Elizabeth Taylor at the time of filming, and the issue was bothering her.  When she felt her popularity was waning, or felt under threat from her peers, it was her body she would return to boost her popularity, but also through which she felt she best expressed herself. Schiller commented: ‘She suggested jumping into the pool clothed, but coming out nude – a kind of resigned awareness of where her bankability lay.’

Lawrence Schiller claimed this the best photo of his career

This rather sad recollection tells of a Monroe with a resignedness as to what the public wanted from her – or at least what she thought they expected. He says ‘When the shoot was over, I rang the magazine and it hit me: wow, she did it! I realised at the same moment how desperate she was. When she had nothing left, to prove that she could still get more publicity than anybody else, out came the birthday suit again.’

It was as if she were coming full circle in posing nude, as she had done at the beginning of her career. The difference being at the beginning of her career she was entering the world of Hollywood as a wide eyed innocent, full of hopes and dreams for the future. In this final shoot, was a more cynical and fragile Marilyn – loved by the world, but ultimately lonely, addicted to pills and growing older in an industry obsessed with youth, plagued with ill health and studios seemingly determined to bring her down due to vague (and unfounded according to at was to be one of her final photo shoots it is interesting that Marilyn returned to her body to ‘do the talking’ for her. She chose to present herself to us at her most vulnerable – literally naked, when she felt not only vulnerable in her career, but also, with the foresight of what was to come in a matter of weeks, undoubtedly vulnerable in her personal life also. Marilyn literally stripped herself bare to her public. She gave everything of herself that there was to give, and the public greedily lapped up all she had to offer. Perhaps this is part of her ultimate allure – Marilyn truly gave herself to her public. She, it would seem, was prepared to give her audience what she believed they wanted in order to get in return the adoration she so craved. In return, her image was devoured by the media and the public alike. Marilyn, so unloved as a child, wanted so desperately to be loved as an adult, and ended up giving herself to a fickle Hollywood machine that could not provide her with what she desired emotionally. Ultimately, as the title of her last unfinished film tellingly foretold ‘something had to give.’

Lawrence Schiller later said the photos of Marilyn in the pool on the set of Something’s Got To Give, were the best photos he ever took – they were so entrenched with meaning.  For Schiller there is a sense of sadness and desperation in her actions. But there is also a sense of triumph. For Marilyn – it was through her skin that she felt her most expressive and empowered and as Eve Arnold commented – in control. She gave what she wanted to give, albeit with (according to Schiller) a sense of desperation at the state of her career – but it was her idea, her choice, her body to give. The photo shoot of Something’s Got to Give can be seen as Marilyn, saying her final goodbye to her audience, her way. Two months later, she was dead.

Marilyn on the set of her last film, the unfinished Something’s Got to Give

Marilyn Monroe: The Naked Truth Part 2

Marilyn as Sugar Kane in Some Like it Hot

In what is probably her most loved role as Sugar Kane, in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, Marilyn was at her least happy, doped up on pills, infuriating her co-stars with her constant re-takes and turning up late for filming, if she turned up at all. Possibly the greatest comedy ever committed to film was made with likely the unhappiest actress in one of its lead roles. Monroe was known to have particularly hated this role, believing no woman would be so stupid as to beleive these two drag artists weren’t men.

The recent film which cast Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe, My Week With Marilyn, in fact, went out of its way to portray the woman behind the glamorous image. Harvey Weinstein, one of the producers of My Week With Marilyn, describes Marilyn’s dicotomous nature as ‘innocent, sexual and intelligent ... an alchemist's dream’.

Marilyn while filming The Seven Year Itch.

This contradiction is also played out in her clothes – the glamorous outfits she is known for – the billowing white halter neck from The Seven Year Itch and the bubblegum pink satin strapless evening dress dripping with diamonds from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes contrast sharply with her clothing worn in her own time. This dichotomy was noted by Marilyn herself when she declared with typical  aplomb: ‘I like to be really dressed up or really undressed. I don’t bother with anything in between.’

Marilyn on the set of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

According to her dressmaker and her personal maid, Lena Pepitone, who was in charge of mending Marilyn's clothes and other functions (like bathing and laundry) Marilyn’s clothes, if anything, were there to highlight what was underneath. She wore her clothes ‘like skin’. Pepitione claimed Marilyn regularly wore clothing so tight that they would split at the seams, requiring Lena to do a lot of mending.

As a result, Monroe’s clothes were often criticised. No less an authority than Joan Crawford carped at her ‘vulgarity’. However, for Marilyn, her ‘if you've got it, flaunt it’ attitude to dressing was getting her noticed. Hems were weighted to achieve the requisite cling. She would place marbles in her bra or sew buttons into the bodice of her dress for the permanent pert-nippled look. Biases were cut so tight that she could not sport underwear – in fact, she was often sewn into her dresses, to achieve the perfect fit. However, rather than harm her reputation, this information, infuriatingly to her detractors, only added to her allure.

Photographed by Eisenstaedt at home, relaxing

Some Hollywood writers accused her of knowing nothing about fashion, but in 1952 she hit back: she was too buxom, she said, to wear Parisian fashions. Like most women, she didn’t have a boys’ figure, as did the Parisian models. In ordinary life Marilyn dressed casually: T-shirts, capri pants and flat shoes. In My Week With Marilyn, this is made abundently clear in one scene where it is shown that ‘Marilyn Monroe’ is a character - she ‘turns on’ for the press. In the scene, she is with Alan Clark, the young Englishman who befriends and is seduced by Marilyn while she is filming The Prince and the Showgirl in Pinewood Studios in 1956, as they are caught in front of a throng of paparazzos who catch up with her while she and Alan are strolling the grounds of Eton. Marilyn turns to Alan and coyly exclaims ‘Shall I be her?’ meaning should she give the press the Marylin they expect. With that, we see her snap physically into ‘character’, leaning against a wall with her shoulders back, chest out, one toe raised and pointed to emphasise the curve of the hip and leanness of her leg. The film clearly suggests that ‘Marilyn‘ was something she was able to ‘turn on’ when required. In particular, it suggests that the real Marilyn was in fact, not only rather different from her public image, but only too aware of it.

Michelle Williams as Norma Jean turns on Marilyn Monroe

In a recent article in The Guardian, Jess Cartner-Morley discusses Marilyn’s toned down style in depth. She writes: ‘in the 1950s her off-screen wardrobe was remarkable for its cool, pared-down colours, its modernity and simplicity. Hers was a simple, confident, typically American style. Jill Taylor, the film’s costume designer, based the wardrobe she designed for Williams on pictures of Monroe from the period. “I found a wonderful photo of her taken during the time the film is set, cycling in the English countryside. She is wearing capri pants, flat loafers and a chunky navy cardigan. She had a very natural, understated way of dressing. I think she was rather ahead of her time, in fact.”’

Marilyn and Arthur Miller take in the English countryside

Cartner-Morley says ‘Marilyn’s wardrobe in the film still looks right today. When Williams-as-Monroe lands at Heathrow, she wears a grey sheath dress under a cream trench, with black sunglasses and a battered tan leather holdall. It is an outfit that would work perfectly in 2011: the tonal mix of grey, tan and black gives what could be an overly ladylike outfit a modern edge. The Max Mara-style camel cashmere coat, in which Marilyn gets mobbed outside the Asprey store in Bond Street, could also walk straight off-set and into a contemporary wardrobe.’

Marilyn is mobbed outside Aspreys on the set of My Week With Marilyn

She continues: ‘The colours Taylor chose for Williams are a strict palette of neutrals: white, cream, beige and black. “White and cream lifts the skin,” says Taylor, “and complexion is part of the character – it was that luminosity that made Marilyn stand out among all the other blonde wannabes.” It gives her a sophistication that stands out against the English characters in their knitted browns, and school-blazer blues. “I wanted to show the difference between the English and Americans. We were so much more traditional and uptight,” says Taylor.’

Helen Mirren as Paula Strasberg to Michelle Williams’ Marilyn

The black polo-neck and houndstooth capri pants which Marilyn wears to a read-through in the film represent how she really dressed. ‘When you see photos of her at the Acting Studios, that is the sort of thing she wore,’ Taylor says. Indeed, the real Marilyn bought a white roll-neck sweater from the veteran London cashmere label N Peal during her stay in England. John Vachon’s photos of a younger Marilyn photographed with her then-boyfriend Joe Di Maggio in 1953 show her canoodling and flirting but wearing black and white checked trousers with a knitted white polo shirt, buttoned right to the neck. Very chic, very contemporary – and strikingly demure. Eve Arnold’s famous portraits of Monroe a few years later, on the set of The Misfits in 1960, also show this almost tomboyish style, with the actor wearing jeans, a white shirt, and a denim jacket.

Marilyn and Joe D Maggio photographed by John Vachon in 1953

Taki Wise, one of the gallerists behind Picturing Marilyn, an exhibition of portraits of Monroe that has just opened in New York, says of her that ‘when she was photographed, she didn’t pose – she evoked a mood.’ Her clothes, too, were more about evoking a mood than modelling a particular fashion. ‘In fact, to be honest, I get the vibe that Marilyn wasn’t all that interested in clothes,’ says Taylor.

See next week's blog for Part 3 of this feature.

Marilyn Monroe: The Naked Truth Part 1

When researching Marilyn Monroe, I found the most discussed topics surrounding her were in fact not her actual films or her career as an actress, the medium through which she found global fame. A lot of the discussion focuses on her early demise but after that, the topic which is returned to again and again is that of her image, her looks and her famous body. There is an obsession with her famous curves, shape, size, people discussing her measurements, bra size, dress size, shoe size, that exists with no other person in history. Her name is constantly hauled into debates about whether skinny or curvy women are more attractive. She is the ultimate poster girl for the 'curvy woman' movement, despite having been a tiny 36-22-35 in her dress measurements for most of her life. Even when discussing Marilyn Monroe's impact as a fashion icon, her enduring image – indeed the image she perpetuated herself as the world’s supreme sex siren – it was what was underneath her clothes (ultimately to her dismay – although she no doubt took advantage of it in her lifetime), which defined her and cemented her image as ‘Marilyn’. It is testament to the impact she made that she is still considered the number one sex symbol the world has known – despite being dead for fifty years.

Norma Jean Baker on one of her first modelling shoots

At the outset of her Hollywood career, as an aspiring actress while working as a pin-up girl, the Hollywood fan magazines at the time were calling for a more extreme sex symbol to compete with sultry Italian actresses such as Gina Lollobrigida who were invading Hollywood. Norma Jean Baker, a model, desperately wanting to break into the acting world, saw her opportunity, and she created the synthetic sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, which would give her all the stardom she could have wished for. In a prim 1950s Hollywood, Marilyn, who controversially posed for Playboy in her early career, seemed to avoid the derision that would have befallen, say Elizabeth Taylor had she done the same thing. Her sexuality seemed intrinsically linked to nature: ‘We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.’ Marilyn's role as a sex symbol appeared to come naturally to her – she projected an image of a woman utterly at ease with her sexuality and also aware of her attractiveness and its effect on those who came into contact with her both in person, and on camera.

Marilyn’s first Playboy shoot

According to the critic Jacqueline Rose, she portrayed an image of sex ‘without complexity, depth or pain, something that hovers above the human – which is why it is such a tease and also why, as others have pointed out, her image seems to have such an intimate proximity with death. Miller [Arthur Miller, playwright and Monroe’s third husband] was not immune to this: her sexuality came to seem, he wrote, “the only truthful connection with some ultimate nature, everything that is life-giving and authentic.” In Miller’s play After the Fall, a thinly veiled account and critique of his failed marriage to Monroe, his character, Quentin, a New York Jewish intellectual who marries Maggie [Marilyn], says of her,  “She was just there...She was just there, like a tree or a cat.”’

Marilyn and Arthur Miller

Today, people want to know about the woman behind the myth – the Marilyn who is more than a sex symbol. Indeed she is said to have hated being typecast as the dumb blonde.  Above all she wanted to be a serious actress. ‘I’d like to be a fine actress,’ she is reported as having said to the photographer George Barris at the end of her life: ‘I wanted to be an artist, not an erotic freak.’

There is also proof she wasn’t as vulnerable or needy as her myth perpetuates – at least when it came to her career.  In defiance against Hollywood's control of her image and also in objection to her low wages compared to other Hollywood stars of the day, Monroe took on the movie studios. For Monroe, money meant freedom and greater control of her image.

Marilyn and Paula Strasberg discussing scenes

Marilyn in discussion with Paula Strasberg 

In 1954 she broke her contract with Twentieth Century Fox, leaving Hollywood for New York to set up her own film company with the photographer Milton Greene (she made sure she controlled 51 per cent of the stock). It was a scandal. Although the project was short-lived, she was at that moment the only star to have taken on the moguls and won. Fox agreed to give her script and director approval on all her films and to pay her $100,000 a film. A recently discovered letter of 1961 shows that she never gave up on her dream. At a time when the Hollywood studios were more or less writing her off, she wrote to Lee Strasberg – the head of the Actors Studio, which she’d been attending since she left Hollywood for New York – that she and her attorneys were planning to set up an independent production unit. ‘I’ll never tie myself to a studio again,’ she said, ‘I’d rather retire.’ ‘She wanted her fair share.’ says Rose. ‘She wanted some money to stop bigger money from controlling her fate.’ Marilyn’s struggle with the studio system has been seen by many as playing a role in her downfall. On her later films she was accused of being unprofessional and even mentally ill. Her defenders however, have suggested that in fact Marilyn was the victim of a studio system in its decline. That she was instead a harbinger of change in seeking an identity beyond the gilded crown Hollywood gave her.

Also in direct contradiction of her image as a ‘dumb blonde’ who toed the line, is her support of the civil rights movement. When the Mocambo nightclub in Los Angeles was reluctant to hire a black singer named Ella Fitzgerald, the owner received a personal call from Monroe, who offered to take a front table every night if he hired Fitzgerald (as Monroe had promised, the press went wild and Fitzgerald, by her own account, never had to play a small jazz club again). Fitzgerald never forgot. Monroe, she said later, was ‘an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times’.

Marilyn and Ella Fitzgerald at the Mocambo Club

The contradiction between Marilyn’s public sex symbol persona, which she played up to the public, and the more serious actress she wanted to be, undoubtedly caused her personal torment and played a significant part in her downfall. As she said herself  ‘a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing...it’s nice to be included in people’s fantasies, but you also like to be accepted for your own sake.’ And indeed it was an image that would exact a price. Amy Greene Andrews, widow of photographer Milton Green, one of Marilyn's closest confidantes, claimed she believed Monroe ‘loved her life’, but what Monroe had not bargained for and could not reconcile was the gulf between her image and her real self. In her later life she made the following statement which shows a woman not only deeply aware, but also at great odds with her personal and public persona:‘I’m a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they’ve made of me and that I’ve made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much, and I can’t live up to it.’

Eve Arnold captures Marilyn filming The Misfits

Monroe endures as the great female icon of the 20th century – fans are intrigued by the woman behind the image – and the tragedy that befell someone who, on the face of it, appeared to have the world at her feet. Indeed it is perhaps her vulnerability, as well as her beauty which still endears her to so many people today. In so many pictures of Marilyn there is an intrinsic sadness in her eyes and demeanour. Rather than feeling threatened by her beauty, women empathise with her and want to be her friend, and men want to save her. She is the ultimate image of the little girl lost – the lonely child who grew up in orphanages wanting to be loved, who went on through sheer grit and determination to become the most famous and most desired woman in the world.

Marilyn was a welter of contradictions – voluptuousness and vulnerability, innocence and experience, part angel, part seductress – someone who brought joy to so many but who could be so unhappy herself. The ditzy blonde she played in so many of her roles clashes with what we know of her as someone who clearly had great self-knowledge and intelligence and was only too aware through a life filled with its own share of tragedy, that the Hollywood veneer covered not only its own seedy underbelly, but was projecting an image of her that was ultimately a sham. Marilyn Monroe was an illusion – a character, an idealisation of womanhood that not even Marilyn Monroe herself could live up to 24-7. When Marilyn declared herself a failure as a woman, it was as a failure of the idealised version of Marilyn Monroe, not of her true self. But towards the end of her life, the gulf between her real self and Marilyn Monroe had become so blurred, even Marilyn herself appeared to be struggling with the reality of who she was and what was expected of her. After all, none of her fans knew the real her – it was Marilyn Monroe they were in love with. Had Hollywood unwittingly set up the potentially vulnerable Norma Jean to fail?

See next week's blog for Part 2 of this feature.

Marilyn Monroe on Chanel no 5

What do I wear in bed? Chanel No. 5!' 

These are the words famously spoken by the Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe. 

In the 1950s the glamour of Chanel No. 5 was reignited by the celebrity whose unsolicited endorsement of the fragrance provided invaluable publicity.

But many have never heard the starlet utter the statement that forever fused the blonde and the fragrance house. 

The 2-minute video opens with a still image of the blonde beauty lying nude in bed as the question 'What do you wear to bed?' flashes up on the screen.

The video then states: 'We may never know when she said the phrase for the first time' as it goes on to unveil the lost footage in a tantalising build-up chronicling the timeline of her famous phrase.

Read more here.

The perennial appeal of high heels

Marilyn Monroe famously had half an inch chopped off one of hers to enhance the wiggle in her walk, while supermodel Veronica Webb claims they "put your ass on a pedestal, where it belongs". I'm talking, of course, about high heels. Those towers of female footwear that combine a plethora of complex contradictions: empowerment, vulnerability, sexual allure, femininity, subversion, fetishism.

Whatever they mean to you, it seems one thing is consistent: British women can't get enough of them. A study has revealed that we teeter around in the highest heels of all our European counterparts, on average elevating our feet by 8.25cm. In fact, a quarter of British women regularly brave stilettos that perch precariously between 10 and 15cm, inspired by the likes of Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole, Elle Macpherson and Kelly Brook, all of whom are devotees of such skyscraping styles.

Read more here.

Iconic Fashion Moments In Film

From Audrey Hepburn's Givenchy LBD, to Faye Dunaway's runaway wardrobe and Rita Hayworth's Gilda moment, the following are some of the most iconic style statements to grace the big screen...

1. Audrey Hepburn In Breakfast at Tiffany’s

So iconic it has a Wikipedia page all of its own. From the moment Audrey stepped out of a yellow taxi cab and stared whimsically into Tiffany & Co’s window in this gorgeous Givenchy creation, our love affair with the LBD began. Audrey and Givenchy met and collaborated on the set of Sabrina in 1954, and a life-long professional and personal partnership was ignited. ‘It was a kind of marriage’, Givenchy would later tell the Telegraph. There was nothing ‘little’ about this LBD – it set a new style standard in Hollywood in direct opposition to Dior’s ‘new look’. A modern icon was born.

2. Marilyn Monroe In The Misfits

Whilst it’s tempting to go with Marilyn’s floaty white halterneck dress made famous in The Seven Year Itch, we’re going to defy convention and opt for an iconic look that doesn’t always top the style polls. Monroe was one of the first Hollywood stars to rock a pair of jeans on screen – and not just any jeans for that matter: Levi’s. As ‘mom’ jeans inundate the high street this year, let’s remember who first styled this high waisted, straight cut denim with a classic white shirt tucked in. Monroe will always be the original blue jean icon.

View the rest of the article here