Netflix’s ‘Blonde’ recreates iconic Marilyn Monroe costumes (PHOTOS)

• New details about Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe movie, Blonde, are released.
• Some of the actress’s most iconic costumes were recreated.
• The painstaking work production went through.

The costumes Marilyn Monroe wore on screen are almost as iconic as she is. For example, the hot pink dress that she wore when singing Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend or the white cocktail dress that billowed around her over a subway vent in The Seven Year Itch.

The film Blonde, based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, which will be released on Netflix, features an incredible cast including Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Sara Paxton, Bobby Cannavale, Jessica Chastain among others. It is expected to be a great film and we have some details about the production.

Marilyn Monroe’s iconic costumes were recreated

The Associated Press reported that Monroe’s costumes have been recreated, reimagined and referenced many, many times, from big-budget movies to music videos to cheap costume stores. The white dress she wore over the subway vent sold for $4.6 million at an auction in 2011, and a replica sold for $120,000 several years later.

Needless to say, Blonde costume designer Jennifer Johnson felt enormous pressure making the outfits we all know so well for the Netflix movie that will be released Wednesday, the AP reported. Filed Under: Blonde Recreates Monroe Dresses

The only original Marilyn Monroe piece they could use

Although Blonde is a fictionalized version of Monroe’s life, the costumes are taken from reality. The vast majority of the pieces that star Ana de Armas wears in the film are recreations that Johnson and her team had to make without an actual reference at hand.

In fact, the only costume she was able to study in person, a coat from the movie Niagara that is stored at Western Costume in Los Angeles, was left out of the film. Instead, Johnson turned to film, photographs from director Andrew Dominik’s 750-page «bible» for the film, and a notebook by William Travilla, the experienced costume designer who worked for movie studios and was responsible for some of the most famous outfits Monroe wore on the big screen. «Obviously we couldn’t have access to the same fabrics, but it was very important to maintain the quality of construction for those original dresses, so they didn’t feel like a cheap simulation or costume,» Johnson said, according to The Associated Press. Filed Under: Blonde Recreates Monroe Dresses

The most difficult garment to recreate

The designer learned from Travilla’s notes that the pink dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes didn’t move properly when Monroe came down the stairs singing Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. The designer, in a last-minute panic, found some green felt destined for a pool table in another apartment and lined the dress with it. Although Johnson didn’t have to use pool table felt, she did relate to Travilla’s fears when she went through similar problems.

Headaches aside, she said, when there’s money, «it’s always easier to do it» than trying to find something old. «It’s very hard to find existing things,» she said. “The old clothes are gone. It literally evaporates off the planet.” By far the most difficult dress to recreate was the white pleated gown immortalized in The Seven Year Itch, another Travilla creation. The folds turned out to be enormously complex, in part because there aren’t many places in America that specialize in the technique these days, which requires custom molds. Filed Under: Blonde Recreates Monroe Dresses

The work it took to make everything ‘perfect’

«We had a lot of failures,» Johnson said. “It was amazing how much fabric was needed to create the bow and the drama of that dress when it goes flying over the subway vent… I think we used about 50 yards because the pleats weren’t right. It looked great, but the molds weren’t designed properly for the folds. There was a lot of research, development, and expense that went into it,” the Associated Press reported.

But in the end it was worth seeing it in the film, where it is almost a supporting character in an important and shocking recreation of a memorable moment. «It was shot so beautifully by Chayse Irvin, our amazing cinematographer, and Andrew is such a visionary,» Johnson said. “It’s real dress porn in the movie. There’s amazing slow-motion footage where you can really revel in the quality of the dress.” Monroe’s off-screen style was much more demure and far from the sequins and glitter of her dresses in the movies. Johnson and Dominik decided that she should have some sort of uniform for when she’s not on assignment, mainly Capri pants and turtleneck sweaters, some even vintage pieces from Los Angeles clothing stores. Filed Under: Blonde Recreates Monroe Dresses