The iconic garment worn by Marilyn Monroe when she sang breathily to John F. Kennedy in 1962 has been in the possession of a hedge fund manager named Martin Zweig since 1999. He paid $1.26 million at the Christie’s auction for it, regarding the dress as an investment and storing it in a climate-controlled room on a mannequin. Seems like he could’ve afforded to pay a real woman to wear it in there, but the overtime would probably be insane.
The Huffington Post reports that the Jean Louis dress was just sold at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills for $4.8 million dollars. Somehow, this dress has appreciated in value. There’s no new info about the dress. We still know it was so tight that Marilyn Monroe had to be sewn into it. We still know it made her appear to be nude. We still know it was a very sexy dress and Marilyn Monroe maybe had some kind of sexual relationship with Kennedy prior to wishing him a happy birthday. She is still dead. Yet here we are.
The dress was bought by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, if you can even believe it. Perhaps now it will at least be on display somewhere for people to see. Earn some money, dress! All of Monroe’s other bits and pieces are. In a hundred years, Marilyn Monroe’s socks and shoes, and yes, this dress, will still be making more money than I will in my lifetime. One day this dress will be the flag flown in our future dystopia, a ragged sequined sheet gleaming on the hill.