A season of Marilyn Monroe films at London’s BFI is a cinematic treat and the perfect excuse to dress up in homage to a proper screen siren. Throw in the reissue of 1961’s The Misfits – released nationwide on 12 June – and adding a bit of Marilyn to your look is even more relevant this month. Here are six things to wear when watching the star’s back catalogue. Blond curls and smouldering expression are optional.
A white shirt and jeans
In the classic scene from The Misfits, when Monroe wrestles with Clark Gable to save a horse, she doesn’t play up the fact that she is the only woman in a world of men by wearing a dress. Instead, her clothes are strikingly simple: a white shirt and a pair of jeans. This is Western dressing taken down to its basic elements, and it’s all the better for it.
A killer frock
Marilyn’s dresses are the stuff of style legend – from the pleated white one worn over the grate in The Seven Year Itch, to the sequinned Happy Birthday Mr President number, and the pink strapless gown (very Lanvin) worn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. What better reason to find your own showstopper? Accessorise with sparkles for the full Lorelei Lee look, or a white fur, if you’re serenading the leader of the free world.
A chunky sweater
Monroe in her downtime is a different kind of glamour, as when she was photographed, windswept and natural, on the beach by George Barris in 1962 – wearing a wrap-around, slightly bobbly chunky sweater and a blanket over her knees. Laid-back but chic, it’s seaside style, whatever the weather.
A fringed skirt
In Some Like It Hot, the sequin dress worn by Monroe as she performs I Wanna Be Loved By You steals the show (and preludes that Happy Birthday moment, as it happens). But, to bite her style in a slightly more IRL way, go for the fringed skirt she wears while singing Running Wild and strumming a banjo on a train carriage. It has all that va-va-voom allure but is wearable to the cinema, too. Bonus.
A great pair of specs
Monroe made all secret nerds happy during her turn in 1953’s How to Marry a Millionaire, the matchmaking comedy that put her alongside Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable: a holy trio of 1950s glamour if ever there was one. Monroe wears glasses – rhinestone cat’s-eye ones – when off duty and looks amazing. As a suitor in the film comments, she is “quite a strudel”.
A stripy vest
Monroe’s career was documented by Eve Arnold – the Magnum photographer snapped her from the early 1950s onwards and captured images of her on the set of The Misfits, hanging out at home, and with her husband Arthur Miller. A classic is the image of Monroe reading Ulysses while sitting on a merry-go-round. Joyce’s mind-bending modernist classic might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but a striped vest like the one Monroe is wearing is a definite takeaway.
