In the wake of the uproar over Kim Kardashian donning a historic Marilyn Monroe gown for the 2022 Met Gala early this week, she revealed in a tweet Friday that she had slipped on another of the starlet’s dresses back in her hotel room that night.
Kardashian posted a photo of herself in a green sequined gown that she described as Monroe’s “Norman Norell dress” that she wore to the Golden Globes in 1962 when she received the Henrietta Award for World Film Favorite.
Kardashian included a photo of Monroe in the dress with actor Rock Hudson.
HuffPost couldn’t immediately confirm it was Monroe’s actual gown. Kardashian appeared to wear the gown differently than Monroe, with dress straps in alternate positions.
It was a nervy post after the controversy that erupted when Kardashian turned up at the Met Gala in the Jean Louis hand-beaded gown Monroe wore when she sang a super-sexy version of “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John F. Kennedy in 1962.
Several observers were appalled that Kardashian would risk damaging the iconic 60-year-old dress. Monroe had been the only person to ever wear the gown.
Textile conservators and fashion curators were particularly upset.
“It sets back what is considered professional treatment for historic costume,” Sarah Scaturro, chief conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art and formerly a conservator at the Met’s Costume Institute, told the Los Angeles Times.
“My worry is that colleagues in historic costume collections are now going to be pressured by important people to let them wear [historic] garments,” she added.
“We just don’t wear archived historic pieces,” said Cara Varnell, a longtime independent art conservator specializing in historic dress.
Something that’s “archived means it has enough cultural importance that we value it and want to save it,” Varnell added. “The dress represents something very important — it’s part of our collective cultural heritage. I’m speechless over it.”
Kardashian insisted that she only wore the dress at the gala for a “few minutes.” She also didn’t put on her typical body makeup that night to protect the dress, she told Vogue.
The reality star said she first tried on the dress in her California home in Calabasas after it was flown there by private plane. The gown is normally kept at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum in Orlando, Florida.
On the night of the gala, Kardashian changed into the historic dress in a small room at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art with the help of a conservationist from Ripley’s, she said.
After she walked up the stairs at the Met, she changed out of Monroe’s gown and donned a replica, she said.
“I’m extremely respectful to the dress and what it means to American history,” Kardashian said. “I would never want to sit in it or eat in it or have any risk of any damage to it.”
Kardashian said she “discovered” the second Monroe gown during her “quest” to find the dress she wore at the gala, she tweeted.
In what appeared to be some kind of olive branch to critics, Kardashian tweeted Friday that “it will forever be one of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to channel my inner Marilyn in this way, on such a special night.”
