Costume designer William Travilla, known as Travilla, won an Oscar for his work in
The Adventures of Don Juan in 1948. In 1952, at
20th Century Fox, he began working with Monroe for the film ''
Don't Bother to Knock. He designed her clothes for eight films and said they had a brief affair. In 1954, while his wife Dona Drake was on vacation, he designed the white cocktail dress Monroe wore. According to the book Hollywood Costume: Glamour! Glitter! Romance!'' by Dale McConathy and
Diana Vreeland, he instead bought it off the rack. He denied this. The dress appears in the sequence of
The Seven Year Itch in which Monroe (playing "the Girl") and costar
Tom Ewell ("Richard Sherman") exit the
Trans-Lux 52nd Street Theatre on Lexington Avenue in New York City, having just watched
Creature from the Black Lagoon. When they hear a subway train passing below the sidewalk grate, she steps on it and asks "Ooh, do you feel the breeze from the subway?" as the wind blows the dress up, exposing her legs. The scene was scheduled to shoot on the street outside the Trans-Lux at 1:00 am on September 15, 1954. Monroe and the movie cameras caught the curiosity of hundreds of fans, so director Billy Wilder
reshot the moment on a set at 20th Century Fox. The scene was compared to a similar event in the 1901 short film,
What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City. The leg shot was called one of the iconic images of the entire 20th century. After Monroe's death in 1962, Travilla kept the dress locked up with many of the costumes he made for her, to the point the collection was rumored lost. After he died in 1990, the clothes were displayed by his colleague Bill Sarris. It joined the private collection of Hollywood memorabilia owned by
Debbie Reynolds at the Hollywood Motion Picture Museum. During an interview with
Oprah Winfrey, Reynolds said the dress was the color
ecru, "because as you know it is very very old now". In 2011, she said she would sell the entire collection at a staged auction, beginning on June 18. It was predicted to sell for between $1 and $2 million, but made $5.6 million (including a $1 million
commission), making it one of the
most valuable dresses. A similar dress, also by Travilla, was worn by actress
Roxanne Arlen in the 1962 film
Bachelor Flat. == Design ==