I knew the moment they said Kim Kardashian was wearing Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr President” dress from 1962 to the Met Gala that it was a bad idea.
Besides her forcing her body to fit into a dress that was seemingly small for her, it was not necessary to wear it. She could’ve worn the replica throughout the gala and not just after the red carpet pictures.
And the fact that she had to lose 16 pounds (7kg), which was still not enough, was a sign that she wasn’t supposed to wear the dress. Not to mention that she couldn’t even sit while wearing it.
“I’m extremely respectful to the dress and what it means to American history. I would never want to sit in it or eat in it or have any risk of any damage to it, and I won’t be wearing the kind of body make-up I usually do,” she told Vogue at the time.
Well, it looks like the 41-year-old reality TV star may have damaged the dress.
On June 13, Pop Crave took to Twitter to post two images of the dress. The first image shows the dress before Kim wore it, and the other shows the dress after she had worn it.
Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dress has reportedly been damaged after being worn by Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala.
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) June 13, 2022
The dress now shows signs of tearing, and several crystals are either missing or hanging off of it. pic.twitter.com/cFu1lUBmzS
In the second image, the dress shows signs of tearing and seems to have lost several crystals. It is alleged that the damage was caused by Kim, since she is the only person to have slipped into the dress.
Social media users commented about the dress, saying that the business mogul should’ve left the dress alone and not even attempted to wear it.
“I knew it. It was impossible that it would come back unscathed. If this has to be kept in a dimly lit room under a special light & can’t take flash photography, y take the chance & let her wear it. The museum played themselves. Now look at yall,” commented @SWashington35.
Another Twitter user, @LaSantaBeni, said: “As a historian, this hurts not because it damaged ‘history’ but because people still treat Marilyn Monroe and her things as public. Her face, her body, her image, her person is not seen as HERS either then or now, and she deserves much more than to be anyone’s symbol.”
The iconic dress with more than 2 500 rhinestones was designed by fresh graduate Bob Mackie as his first-ever post-grad project.