Marilyn Monroe's White Dress

Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962) was an American actress, model, and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s and early 1960s.

After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946 with Twentieth Century-Fox. Her early film appearances were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950), drew attention. By 1952 she had her first leading role in Don't Bother to Knock and 1953 brought a lead in Niagara, a melodramatic film noir that dwelt on her seductiveness. Her "dumb blonde" persona was used to comic effect in subsequent films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Limited by typecasting, Monroe studied at the Actors Studio to broaden her range. Her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (1956) was hailed by critics and garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, released The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination and won a David di Donatello award. She received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Some Like It Hot (1959). Monroe's last completed film was The Misfits (1961), co-starring Clark Gable, with a screenplay written by her then-husband, Arthur Miller.

The final years of Monroe's life were marked by illness, personal problems, and a reputation for unreliability and being difficult to work with. The circumstances of her death, from an overdose of barbiturates, have been the subject of conjecture. Though officially classified as a "probable suicide", the possibility of an accidental overdose, as well as of homicide, have not been ruled out. In 1999, Monroe was ranked as the sixth-greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute. In the decades following her death, she has often been cited as both a pop and a cultural icon as well as the quintessential American sex symbol.   In 2009, TV Guide Network named her No. 1 in Film's Sexiest Women of All Time.

Dress
When the costume designer William Travilla, known simply as Travilla, began working with Marilyn Monroe, he had already won an Oscar for his work in The Adventures of Don Juan in 1948. When Travilla began working with Marilyn in 1952 in Don't Bother to Knock, he was still one of the many costume designers of 20th Century Fox. Travilla designed the clothes of the actress in eight films, and according to his revelation, also had a brief affair. In 1955 he designed the white cocktail dress worn by Marilyn Monroe while his wife Dona Drake was on vacation. It remains his most famous work. According to ''Hollywood Costume: Glamour! Glitter! Romance!'' by Dale McConathy and Diana Vreeland, Travilla did not design the dress but actually bought it off the rack (although the costume designer always denied this claim).

In the film, the white dress appears in the sequence in which Marilyn Monroe and co-star Tom Ewell exit the Trans-Lux 52nd Street Theatre, then located at 586 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, having just watched the 1954 horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon. When they hear a subway train passing below the grate in the sidewalk, Monroe's character steps onto the grate saying "Ooo, do you feel the breeze from the subway?", as the wind blows the dress up exposing her legs. Originally the scene had been scheduled to shoot on the street outside the Trans-Lux at 1:00 am on 15 September 1954. However, the presence of the actress and the movie cameras caught the curiosity of hundreds of fans, so the director Billy Wilder was forced to reshoot the moment on a set at 20th Century Fox. The depiction of Monroe over the grate has been compared to a similar event in the 1901 short film What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City.  It has also been described as one of the iconic images of the entire 20th century.

After Monroe's death in 1962, Travilla kept the dress locked up with many of the costumes he had made over the years for the actress, to the point that for years there was talk of a "Lost Collection". Only after his own death in 1990, were the clothes put on display by Bill Sarris, a colleague of Travilla.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10"> It joined the private collection of Hollywood memorabilia owned by Debbie Reynolds at the Hollywood Motion Picture Museum.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11"> During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, speaking of the Monroe dress, Reynolds stated that "[the dress] has become ecru because as you know it is very very old now."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-12"> In 2011, however, Reynolds announced that she would sell the entire collection at an auction, to be held in stages, the first on 18 June 2011.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-COF_13-0"> <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14"> Before the auction, it was estimated that the dress would sell for a price between $1 and 2 million,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-PigeonForge_15-0"> but it actually sold for more than $5.6 million ($4.6 million plus a $1 million commission).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-16"> <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-17">

Design
The dress is a light-colored ivory cocktail dress in a style which was in vogue in the 1950s and 1960s. The halter-like bodice has a plunging neckline and is made of two pieces of softly pleated fabric that come together behind the neck, leaving the wearer's arms, shoulders and back bare. The halter is attached to a band situated immediately under the breasts. The dress fits closely from there to the natural waistline. A soft and narrow self belt was wrapped around the torso, criss-crossing in front and then tied into a small neat bow at the waist, at the front on the left side. Below the waistband is a softly pleated skirt which reaches to mid-calf or below the calf length.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-18"> There is a zipper at the back of the bodice, and tiny buttons at the back of the halter.