“Each decade has its own fashion icons,” Laura Craik writes for the Telegraph. “But some kind of sartorial magic happens when two stylish people meet, fall in love and build a life together. A shared aesthetic isn’t a prerequisite … Take Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, or Madonna and Sean Penn; unlikely couples who were somehow better together in style terms.” As the most stylish couple of the 1950s, the Millers are flanked by the wartime romance of Bogart and Bacall, and the glorious excess of Burton and Taylor in the Sixties.
“Only a fool would try to outshine Marilyn, and playwright Arthur Miller was certainly not one of those. If she was drawn to his intellect, he was drawn to the same qualities that so compelled the rest of the world, meeting her in 1950 and marrying her six years later (portmanteaus having yet to become a ‘thing’, they were swiftly nicknamed The Hourglass and The Egghead). Different as they may have been, their wardrobes echoed their compatibility. This was a marriage of hearts, minds and coats: sumptuous furs for her, cosy tweeds for him. While Miller played up his bookish credentials in casual, unstructured jackets, chinos and black-rimmed glasses, Monroe looked ever glamorous on his arm – even in jeans, thanks to her unfailing ability to make everything she wore look like a million dollars.”
The Marilyn Report 