The Most Famous Dress in the World

The following is an excerpt from Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon Was Styled by William Travilla by Andrew Hansford (Applause Books), as posted on The Random Thoughts of Crazy Mandy.

The design that Travilla created for the dress was far quicker than the filming of the scene; he was so inspired that he produced the entire costume ensemble for The Seven Year Itch out over one weekend. When asked to create the costumes for this movie Travilla had been delighted on many levels. First, there was the obvious pleasure in working with Marilyn but, as important, was that the movie was shot in New York. Travilla loved New York and spent a lot of time there and he knew just how to evoke the feeling of the Big Apple.
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After his frenzied weekend of designing Travilla showed Marilyn his ideas and, as she always did, she approved them all. The role she was to play was simply “The Girl”; sensuous and beautiful, her character still had to possess a sweet and innocent demeanour. So Travilla had to portray Marilyn as pure and lovely, almost talcum-powder clean. Achieving this effect on a humid, sunny afternoon in New York was not an easy task.
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The script presented challenges too. Travilla knew the halter-neck dress with its sunburst pleats would have to blow up at some point in the movie. So the fabric he chose was an ivory coloured rayon-acetate crepe, heavy enough to flow beautifully as she walked but still light enough to blow up in an interesting way. It is clear just by looking at the pictures that the dress did not blow up vertically like so many of the copies have done; instead it billowed, allowing her to pose seductively among the pleats of the skirt. Travilla never normally used manmade fabric, but with pleating this posed a challenge, as 100 per cent natural fabric would not hold such stiff pleats so, for all his pleated creations, a special fabric with just a small amount of manmade fibre in it to maintain the structure had to be made.

Keep reading this excerpt on Mandy’s blog…

William Travilla is one of the best costume designers of all time and Marilyn Monroe his most famous client. Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon Was Styled by William Travilla focuses on the striking dresses that Travilla designed for Marilyn, from his early work on the thrillerDon’t Bother to Knock and the gorgeous pink dress in which Marilyn sang “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” to the legendary white dress from The Seven Year Itch, which arguably contributed to the collapse of Marilyn’s marriage to Joe DiMaggio. Featuring Travilla’s original sketches, rare costume test shots, dress patterns, photographs of Marilyn wearing the dresses, plus exclusive and never-before-seen extracts from interviews with Travilla, this book offers a fresh insight into the golden age of Hollywood.

Dressing Marilyn Monroe

 

Guest blogger: Andrew Hansford, author of Dressing Marilyn (Applause Books)

 

I was very nervous when it came to writing ‘Dressing Marilyn’. Marilyn Monroe has a huge following and I wanted to make sure I did her justice.  Everyone has their opinions of Marilyn and they change dramatically. However I met some amazing people along the way who made the process very enjoyable.

William Travilla and Marilyn Monroe made an incredible team, the star of the silver screen and the genius of Travilla culminated in some of the most recognised costume in cinematic history. Everyone knows his dresses but very few know him, he hated publicity, saying on more than one occasion I am a designer not a celebrity.

Their partnership was one of total trust, he knew exactly how to dress her, she never questioned his opinions, including when designing the costumes for ‘The seven Year Itch’, she did not even want to see the sketches beforehand she knew he would make her beautiful. And we all know what that movie did for her stardom. He pushed the limit of the sensors by dressing Marilyn in the most seductive way without showing a thing. His designs were a labour of love and knew exactly how the world needed to see her. He is the man who made Marilyn Monroe the screen legend we all see today.

Never has a partnership lasted the test of time, Marilyn still the most talked about, copied and written about star and Travilla the man who dressed her and what dresses are so often desired or copied? All of his!!

This book turned into a labour of love and I hope and pray that everyone associated with Travilla and Marilyn are happy and proud of the result.

Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon Was Styled by William Travilla by Andrew Hansford (Applause Books)

William Travilla is one of the best costume designers of all time and Marilyn Monroe his most famous client. Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon Was Styled by William Travilla focuses on the striking dresses that Travilla designed for Marilyn, from his early work on the thrillerDon’t Bother to Knock and the gorgeous pink dress in which Marilyn sang “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” to the legendary white dress from The Seven Year Itch, which arguably contributed to the collapse of Marilyn’s marriage to Joe DiMaggio. Featuring Travilla’s original sketches, rare costume test shots, dress patterns, photographs of Marilyn wearing the dresses, plus exclusive and never-before-seen extracts from interviews with Travilla, this book offers a fresh insight into the golden age of Hollywood. Available from Amazon.com, B&N, independent bookstores, and ApplauseBooks.com.