2/100: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
(Faux) Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Costumes by: William “Billy” Travilla
Directed by: Howard Hawks
This movie may be for you if: you’ll happily run up a man’s tab, you love a classic bestie caper, and you believe no outfit is complete without matching accessories.
Where to watch: I don’t currently see it streaming free anywhere. It’s available to rent for $3.99 on YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Movies, and multiple other platforms.
Hollywood has never been a stranger to a remake. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a fun, glamorous musical comedy based on a 1949 stage musical, which was itself based on a comic novel from 1925. The original story was written by Anita Loos, the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood. Her story debuted the now-legendary Lorelei Lee as a self-indulgent flapper during the Jazz Age. Every version of this story was a hit - the Broadway show had a 740 show run, and the book was the second-best selling title of 1926 in the US, highly praised by literary stars like William Faulkner and Edith Wharton.
Now known best for one of Marilyn Monroe’s most memorable roles, the costume design for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was done by William Travilla. The artist and designer primarily worked on Twentieth Century Fox films before moving to TV costuming in the 1970’s. Travilla provided award-winning designs for everything from Adventures of Don Juan (1949) to Dallas (1984-1986), but is best known for dressing Monroe in eight of her films. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes includes one of the most iconic dresses in movie history, along with an additional 20+ looks for its leading ladies.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was one of three movies released in 1953 starring Marilyn Monroe. She was paid significantly less than her co-star, Jane Russell, who was much more well known at the time of filming. According to Monroe in one of her final interviews, she was paid her usual salary of $500 per week for the project, earning her only $18,000 compared to Russell’s $200,000 paycheck. 1953 was really the year Monroe became a true mainstream movie star, and the costuming for Blondes played a big part in cementing her legacy of playing sultry, glamorous characters in fabulous Travilla designs.
The fashion of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is feminine, form-fitting, and highly coordinated. Every look has multiple complementary accessories - of course there’s tons of dazzling jewelry, but also belts, hats, scarves, and shawls. Showgirls Lee and Shaw were dressed to turn heads even when they weren’t performing, often wearing bright colors, bold prints, and plenty of matching sets as were popular during the time.
Though not nearly the most famous look from the film, my personal favorite outfit is Monroe’s bright orange dress. Trust Travilla to make crystals and beads in Hi-C orange look classy. This look undoubtedly inspired many of the tragic knockoffs on the dance floor of my 2009 prom, as the figure-hugging ruched mermaid shape has inevitably come back in style every other decade. The dress was likely kept by the studio after filming, as it reappeared on Abbey Lincoln just four years later for her movie debut in The Girl Can’t Help It (1957). Lincoln appeared on the cover of Ebony magazine in the dress, though has lamented the look and its associations in later interviews.
More famous was Monroe’s pleated gold lamé dress, which is actually more recognized from publicity images than its brief appearance in the film. The dress was deemed too inappropriate for audiences to show in its entirety, so was only glimpsed by audiences from behind in one short scene.
But most famous of all, of course, is Monroe’s hot pink dress and gloves for a legendary rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” An outfit fitting such a song clearly needed to be sparkly, but the original concept was completely different than the finished look. Travilla later recalled in an interview that “the idea then was that the studio make her the sexiest, most exciting, almost-naked lady on the screen.”
The original costume design, shown below in wardrobe tests, was an illusion look created with fishnet hose over a nude bodystocking and layers of jewelry strategically placed to cover just enough skin.
During filming, news broke that Monroe had posed for fully nude photos just a few years prior. The photos were included in a calendar that was already quite widely circulated, and one of those images would be featured later that year in the first issue of Playboy Magazine without Monroe’s consent. The executives as Twentieth Century Fox tried to convince Marilyn to deny the claims, but she refused. She granted an exclusive interview to discuss the situation, in which she very honestly admitted “I was broke and needed the money. Why deny it? Besides, I’m not ashamed of it, I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The scandal and the ensuing press just made Monroe an even bigger star, but the studio executives scrambled to “fix” the scandalous look planned for the upcoming film. They demanded that Travilla redesign the fishnet look for something significantly more covered up. The new design was a vibrant pink dress and gloves that covered most of Monroe’s body. A belt cinched her famously small waist, while an oversized bow was added to highlight her figure while dancing.
Travilla created the shape by backing the pink silk in green billiard felt, and the piece came together using just two side seams. “The dress was folded into shape, rather like cardboard,” he said of the design. “Any other girl would have looked like she was wearing cardboard, but on the screen I swear you would have thought Marilyn had on a pale, thin piece of silk. Her body was so fabulous, it still came through!”
Early sketches of the look actually show it paired with long black gloves and black shoes, but Travilla changed the accessories to pink for the final design. The gloves worn were an exact match to the dress, with a lighter pink fabric at the palms.
The number’s dazzling “diamonds” are frequently misattributed to Harry Winston, who loaned real jewels to films like The Graduate and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. However, the many gems in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes were synthetic stones credited to Joan Joseff of Joseff of Hollywood. A collection of Joseffs’ costume jewelry is currently on exhibition at The Hollywood Museum in LA. Marilyn Monroe is mentioned in some of the exhibit press, but I couldn’t find more information on exactly which items are on display. Maybe you could see these exact “Girl’s Best Friend”s for yourself!
The pink dress sold for auction in 2010 for over $300,000, though there were some questions about whether the piece at auction was the exact piece used in the original performance.
This look has gone down in history as one of the most memorable and influential looks in Hollywood, earning itself its own wikipedia page. Lorelei’s pink dress and gloves have been imitated, referenced, and parodied in everything from ad campaigns to red carpets. Perhaps the most well-known homage comes from Madonna’s 1985 music video for Material Girl, in which the singer recreates Monroe’s performance from the set to the hair to, of course, the dress.
Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Moulin Rouge! references both Monroe and Madonna in a mash up rendition of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” and “Material Girl.” Kidman doesn’t wear hot pink, instead drawing parallels through a sparkling showgirl suit and a crowd of adoring men.
Monroe’s song and dance number is so immediately recognizable, it’s also served as a go-to dream/fantasy sequence for the delusional main characters of Birds of Prey, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Gossip Girl.
Mattel produced a Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Barbie in 1997. I was pretty surprised not to see a reference to the look in the 2023 Barbie movie, but eventually received an homage in Ryan Gosling’s pink-suited Oscar performance. And Gosling’s song and dance number actually wasn’t the first time a male actor had made reference to the “Diamonds” look at the Oscars, following a 2011 cross-dressing bit by James Franco that definitely wouldn’t amuse contemporary audiences today.
While the list is missing a few of my favorite examples, People magazine put together Every Star Who Has Had a Marilyn Monroe ‘Diamonds’ Moment if you’re curious to see who else has paid tribute to Travilla’s original design. The Wikipedia page for the song also includes an extensive list of covers and tributes.
For obvious reasons, this movie sits firmly atop the 100 Fashion Films Project list. While other 10/10 films will inevitably join it at the summit, William Travilla created a truly legendary look that will be pretty hard to beat.
Overall Rank: 10/10
Fashion: 10/10
Influence: 10/10
Movie: 7/10
Confession: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was my first Marilyn Monroe movie! Clips and photos don’t do her unique brand of breathless charm justice, and I really did enjoy the one-of-a-kind performance she brought to the big screen. She’ll be making one more appearance on this project, but you’ll just have to wait and see how and when…
Until next time! Happy Valentine’s Day, lovers.