As People reports, actress and singer Jennifer Lopez has recalled the moment she arrived at the 2000 Grammys wearing a revealing green Versace gown. While perhaps not quite as iconic as Marilyn’s silk pleated dress blowing over a subway grate in The Seven Year Itch, it is certainly one of the most talked-about fashion moments in more recent times.
“‘It was a dress that other people had worn already. My stylist was like, “Please don’t wear it. Somebody else has worn it”. I was like, “Well, you bought it, and it looks the best, so I’m going to wear it.” And so I did. And it caused quite a stir,’ explained Lopez, reflecting on 17 of her biggest fashion moments during an interview with Vogue.
The multi-hyphenate compared the gown’s impact to that of Marilyn Monroe’s white halter dress from The Seven Year Itch.
‘I guess every generation needs its iconic kind of Marilyn dress, and this is that dress for this generation,’ said Lopez. ‘Why it became that? It was just a moment when the wind blew open, and I walked out onto the stage, and it just kinda happened.'”
As Kate Finnigan explained in an article for the Telegraph, Marilyn’s ‘subway dress’ had a similarly inauspicious beginning, as not even its designer foresaw the furore it would inspire.
“The white halter-neck dress blown up by a passing train in the subway scene of The Seven Year Itch was dismissed by Travilla as ‘that silly little dress’, but to many it is the most famous dress in cinema history. Travilla actually made three versions of this dress; one sold at auction [in 2011] for $4.6 million having been previously owned by the actress Debbie Reynolds.
Monroe’s character, ‘The Girl’, although beautiful and sexy, was required to possess an innocent demeanour, which Travilla had to reflect in his design. He chose an ivory-coloured rayon-acetate crêpe, and once again the colour looks different on film because white would actually have looked grey or murky.
This dress, like the others, was boned in metal, allowing the halter neck to lie flat against the chest. The skirt had a rolled hem and each pleat was hand-formed and sewn into place; the stitching is visible in close-up photographs.”
In terms of dresses worn by Marilyn in public – as opposed to in movies or photo shoots – Travilla’s gold lamé dress that so outraged Joan Crawford at the Photoplay Awards in 1953 comes close to J-Lo’s Grammys sensation.
And finally, there’s the ‘Happy Birthday Mr. President‘ dress, made for Marilyn by Jean Louis in 1962. After selling for $4.8 million at auction in 2016, it’s officially the most expensive dress of all time – and was infamously reworn by Kim Kardashian (something of a Lopez wannabe herself) at the Met Gala in 2022.
UPDATE:
J-Lo’s glamorous appearance at a 2025 Golden Globes after-party has sparked Monroe comparisons from Cosmopolitan and others (although the all-white look began with Jean Harlow…)
The Marilyn Report 