's dress from the event, designed by
Jean Louis Monroe's
iconic dress was designed by costume designer
Bob Mackie, who was hired to sketch the design for the leading fashion designer of the time,
Jean Louis, who paid $1,440.33 (equivalent to $ in ) for its construction. The dress sold in 1999 at an auction in New York City for over $1.26 million (equivalent to $ in ). making it one of the
most valuable dresses. In 2022,
reality TV star
Kim Kardashian wore Monroe's Happy Birthday Mr. President dress for the
Met Gala. Kardashian had lost in three weeks to fit into the dress. Kardashian remains the only person other than Monroe known to have worn the dress. Kardashian wore Monroe's original dress for approximately five minutes, only to walk up the runway, and then changed into an exact replica so as to not cause any more unnecessary strain to the 60-year-old dress. Displeased with both Kardashian and the current owner,
Ripley Entertainment, Bob Mackie (who first sketched the design in 1962 at the age of 23) said in an interview with
Entertainment Weekly, "I thought it was a big mistake.. [Marilyn] was a goddess. A crazy goddess, but a goddess. She was just fabulous. Nobody photographs like that. And it was done for her. It was designed for her. Nobody else should be seen in that dress." In an interview with
BBC in June 2022, Dr. Kate Strasdin, a senior lecturer in cultural studies at
Falmouth University, remarked, "You can't even handle a dress like that without damaging it in some way, let alone wear it, so it was inevitable that there was going to be significant damage just by even wearing it on the red carpet... there will have been oils in her skin, there will have been all of that chemical reaction with a silk that is fragile". It is also noted that an
Instagram account dedicated to "The Marilyn Monroe Collection", a company which claims to hold "the world's largest privately held collection of Marilyn Monroe's personal property," managed by owner Scott Fortner's team, posted a comparison image of the dress which showed significant irreversible damage which occurred after the gala event. ==Legacy==