I gasped when I saw it - just as the audience did when Marilyn Monroe peeled off her white fur stole at John F Kennedy’s fundraiser in 1962 to reveal the shimmering, sheer, skin-tight gown.
Last night, 6,000 crystals hand sewn on the dress dazzled under photographers' lightbulbs and over Kim Kardashian ’s Skims lingerie.
It was a marketing masterstroke: Kim vacuumed all attention from the heavily styled A-List guests at the Met Gala.
All the best looks have a story behind them. And what a story.
Explaining it to my triplet 13-year-old daughters over breakfast, who had already seen a Tik Tok frenzy over the dress, we YouTubed the moment Marilyn stepped from behind a podium to shrieks and roars of approval as the crowd took her in. Her impossibly sexy, breathy rendition of Happy Birthday double sealed the moment as iconic.
One dress and just 90 seconds on stage told the world JFK was more than Marilyn’s president. It showed her famous figure looking better than ever, and her underrated chutzpah in having the courage to wear something daringly translucent when women generally wore buttoned-up conservative styles. Marilyn looked naked bar jewels. No wonder that moment was never forgotten in the seven decades since.
Then I read Kim’s story in a Vogue interview published just before the Met Gala as part of the perfect PR package. And I grew less impressed and cut short the conversation with my daughters.
Marilyn’s dress, sold for £4million at auction in 2016, was shipped to Kim’s home by private plane - flicking two fingers up to environmental concerns.
And it turns out Marilyn, with her natural, coveted curves, was smaller than surgically-enhanced Kim. And Kim was having none of it.
Talking of her efforts to lose 16lbs quickly, she said: “So when it didn’t fit me I wanted to cry because it can’t be altered at all.” She wore a “sauna suit twice a day,” exercised daily and stuck to a strict diet of no sugar and carbs.
“I didn’t starve myself, but I was so strict,” Kim said. “I wanted to cry tears of joy when it went up.”
Kim wants the world to know this - and I don’t want my daughters or any other impressionable Kardashian fans to hear it.
I imagined one day showing my girls Marilyn’s Happy Birthday Mr President dress, which has been stored in a darkened, climate-controlled vault until Kim got her manicured hands on it. And I thought of the plaque, which until last night could have said: “Worn by one woman only: Marilyn Monroe, actress, singer, businesswoman, icon.”
Now it will now have a postscript: “And reality TV star Kim Kardashian.”
I am no longer wowed by the PR genius behind Kim’s Met Gala outfit. Instead I feel sad.
