ANALYSIS: The borrowed dress that shows money, influence and Instagram can get you what should be untouchable
When the Australian-born costume designer Orry-Kelly was locking horns with Marilyn Monroe on the fraught set of Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot, the foolhardy costumier made the mistake of telling the superstar that Tony Curtis had a better-looking arse than her.
Sewn to her body and clinging like smoke his sheer souffle silk was encrusted with fine beads and sequins rising up her body to finish just at her nipples. The theme of the gala was Gilded Glamour, a reference to New York’s post-Civil War boom-time of aggressive entrepreneurs, robber-baronIf ever anyone nailed the brief of that event, it was this young woman in a famous dress that didn't fit her, raided from a museum that should have known better.
Kim Kardashian hit the The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala with her new partner, Pete Davidson, and a dress made famous by Marilyn Monroe.Conservators and historians were aghast that something as fragile and important as that dress had been taken out of its temperature-controlled museum and loaned for the sole purpose of a photo opportunity.
But can you imagine how difficult it would have been for a High Street museum like Ripleys Believe it or Not, to say no to a phone call from a Kardashian?