Lee Jeans has partnered with Authentic Brands Group (ABG), the owners of Marilyn’s estate, on a new capsule collection, as Angela Velasquez reports for WWD (aka Women’s Wear Daily.)
“Photographer Eve Arnold’s iconic images of Marilyn Monroe wearing Lee’s Storm Rider jacket on the set of her final film, The Misfits (1961), continue to influence fashion 65 years later.
Authentic Brands Group signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lee from Kontoor Brands in May. The collection was created to honor Monroe’s 100th birthday. Guess, Hyer, sustainable jewellery brand Aurate and eyewear brand Dita have also released centennial collections.
The Storm Rider Jacket is the collection’s hero. The jacket has the same fit and details as the version Monroe wore and includes a blanket lining in an exclusive Marilyn Monroe palette, a custom Storm Rider label and hidden red lip embroidery.
A Boyfriend Button-Down Shirt with tonal lip embroidery on the cuff nods to the actress’ timeless look of a white shirt and jeans. The Marilyn Jean has a retro high-rise waist with back darts for shaping. It comes cuffed at the hem, like Monroe wore, or can be uncuffed for extra length.
The collection also includes the Coatigan, a belted cardigan inspired by the sweater Monroe wore in her final photoshoot, and a Halter Dress modelled after her famous scene in The Seven Year Itch. The dress is available in lightweight blue and black denim.
An assortment of loose-fit tees and sweatshirts featuring Arnold’s famous photos round out the collection.
The Lee x Marilyn Monroe collection is available globally on Lee’s owned website and retail locations in U.S., Mexico, Europe, Japan, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador. Select pieces are also sold on Nordstrom.com, Amazon and Walmart.com and select retailers in the U.S. and Europe.”
Beyond Denim
This white t-shirt with red stripes recalls Marilyn’s teenage modelling shoots with Bruno Bernard, back in 1945 – when she was still Norma Jeane Dougherty, and expected to bring her own clothing.
Lee’s blue halter-dress reminds me not only of the famous ‘subway grate dress’, but also Marilyn’s own blue sundress, worn for photographer Sam Shaw in 1957.
And of course, the ‘Coatigan’ is based on a Mexican-style knitwear piece from Marilyn’s favourite boutique, JAX, worn during a photo shoot with George Barris on Santa Monica Beach in the summer of 1962, just weeks before her passing.
Reviewing the collection for the New York Post, Faran Krentcil asks: ‘Will Marilyn Monroe’s iconic jeans turn us into bombshells?’
“On Thursday, a pair of jeans flopped onto my desk like a fish at a sushi market. ‘Try them out,’ instructed my boss. ‘See what they can do.’
The big draw was the jeans, remade with a tiny bit more stretch but the same 65-year-old shape… which meant a high waist that looked like it could choke out my intestines, and the type of ‘where’s the flood?’ ankle cuff that got me bullied in middle school.
Lying limp on my desk, these $109 bottoms looked, to quote my adolescent tormenters, ‘super f—ing sad’ — which meant I wasn’t too psyched when I was asked, along with some hesitant colleagues, to wear them around the office … Actually, my first thought — once these things were zipped and buttoned — was ‘ow.’
Like all post-pandemic millennials, I am used to the kind of boyish, baggy jeans last seen on the wastoid skaters in Clueless, the looser and softer the better. Unlike those blissful sweatpants, these Marilyn jeans hit super high on my torso — like, past my belly button — and squeezed my waist with the clingy force of a toddler who doesn’t want to leave the playground.
Tightest at the butt and ankles, these pants had almost no stretch … I felt like a sausage. But it turned out, I kind of looked like a smokeshow. My stomach was flatter. My butt was rounder. My cowboy boots peeked out of the cuffed bottoms like a vintage Ralph Lauren ad.
Women in the Post newsroom stopped to tell me I looked ‘different’ with a nod of approval, as if I’d gotten a therapist and a Gwyneth-approved trainer instead of a cotton-poly blend. This was actually a pretty good deal for $109.
Marilyn Monroe fashion collector and historian Scott Fortner had a theory about why. He told The Post that costume designers loved putting Marilyn Monroe in jeans because it conveyed a ‘glamorous but easy, all-American look.’
He noted that the fit of these jeans ‘would feel a little different’ on a modern body because Marilyn’s silhouettes were famously tailored to exaggerate her hourglass figure, even if it meant feeling yanked. ‘In her personal life, she actually didn’t wear jeans very much!’ said Fortner. ‘She wore things that were more comfortable for her — capris and cotton pants and silk Pucci pants.’
These Misfit jeans, Fortner explained, ‘are what people thought Marilyn wore, when they tried to copy her… It’s why you saw women wearing jeans in the 1950s and 1960s. She helped make it glamorous.’ Fortner suspects the Marilyn x Lee jeans ‘will be a hit’ — but my Post colleagues were a mixed bag on whether they were worth ‘the bombshell tax’ of feeling squished and cinched.”
