Marilyn Monroe’s imprint on beauty and style was singular. The word ‘iconic’ can’t even encompass how definitive her skintight silhouettes, glossy red lips, glowy complexion and artfully arched brows have been to generations of aspiring bombshells. Netflix’s new biopic Blonde traces the actress’ life from her troubled childhood in Los Angeles to her tragic passing in 1962, with Ana de Armas taking the reins as Monroe. But director Andrew Dominik’s take on the star’s life is not your typical biopic. In some moments, Blonde is eerie and in others, it’s more abstract. And since it draws from Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel of the same name, Blonde doesn’t shy away from fictional elements, but each of Monroe's memorable looks is spot-on. Around the time the first stills made their way online, I remember scrolling past a tweet saying something along the lines of "Ana de Armas looks more like Marilyn Monroe than Marilyn Monroe." That wasn't by chance—the hair, makeup, and costume teams did research that they liken to "forensic levels" to perfect this portrayal.
To convincingly recreate Marilyn’s distinct features and aesthetic on de Armas, it required a very tailored approach. “I think anytime you're doing a recreation of something so iconic, familiar, and easy to Google, the challenge is to figure out how that original design was made and what fabrics were used. That takes a kind of forensic-level research,” explains costume designer Jennifer Johnson. “If you just copy the costume, it takes away from the original process of designing. I didn't want to just copy and paste looks on Ana. They needed to work with her.” Since they didn’t have access to Monroe’s archival costumes (which were the source of serious controversy earlier this year) each of the looks de Armas wears on-screen were custom recreations of her larger-than-life on-screen moments and her understated at-home style.
In the hair and makeup department, there was something supernatural about de Armas’ morphing into Monroe. Each day before stepping on set, the three-hour long evolution included a brow transformation (they shaved de Armas' brows into shape per the star's request to ensure her natural brows grew back), reshaping de Armas’ mouth, and applying lots and lots of lashes. But hair department head Jaime Leigh McIntosh said that it all came together when she applied the wigs. “Ana would be sitting there with her hair pulled back then Tina [Roesler Kerwin, the makeup department head] would put the silicone prosthetic pieces on and [Ana] would sit there kind of looking half bald for a little while, while Tina found Marilyn in there,” she tells Coveteur. “It wasn't until the last ten minutes with the finishing touches [that it would come together].” A couple of weeks before the film’s September 28th premiere on Netflix, Johnson, Kerwin, and McIntosh walked us through how they orchestrated de Armas’ uncanny transformation.
Tina Roesler Kerwin and Jamie-Leigh McIntosh with Ana de Armas on set of 'Blonde'.
Photo: Netflix
Walk me through the process of finding Marilyn in the hair and makeup chair.
Tina Roesler Kerwin: "There were technical things that had to happen first. The blonde wig did not work on Ana’s hair so I had to put three prosthetic pieces underneath the wigs to give her a half bald cap so that the blonde wigs looked like they were actually sitting on skin. It was a prosthetic because it looked more transparent and it held up better during a day of wig changes. Then we'd work on minimizing and lightening her brows so that they looked more like Marilyn's. The next thing was the eye shape—Marilyn’s lash line was longer than Ana’s because Ana’s eyes are a little more round. We just kept trying until we nailed down our basic Marilyn look."
Jamie-Leigh McIntosh: "It wasn't until the whole wig went on that it was like, oh, okay. I'm seeing her now. Trying to find her when we began was just a huge collaboration with Andrew, Ana, and Tina. There are so many different Marilyns, so we needed to find a baseline, an image that you see most of her. Once we nailed that down, we'd go from there."
De Armas behind the scenes of 'Blonde'.
Photo: Netflix
Was there a particular era or look of Marilyn’s that was most difficult to execute?
JLM: "Gosh, I think they were all difficult. But I’d say the recreation of when she’s singing I Wanna Be Loved By You. Because she's playing a character in a film, It was a little off from what Marilyn's normal, iconic looks were. Finding that shape, that texture and that hairstyle was a challenge."
You’ve said that you used as little product as possible on the wigs, but what products did you use to hold the curls?
JLM: "The wigs were always washed and wet roller set, then were dried overnight. I would use a little bit of L'Oreal Tecni.Art Pli, which gave me some hold for those curls. Then I would sometimes use a light shine spray. At the time I was using one by the Ouai, but they don't make it anymore. Then, only when I needed to, I would use a little bit of hairspray for hold—I’d use an unscented hairspray by Tresemme. But overall, very little product because the more product that's in the hair, the more it can tend to start looking helmet-y and not move naturally. You still want it to have the hold and the style without losing the softness, so it can look touchable."
What were your on-set essentials, Tina?
TRK: "We used Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter to mimic the Vaseline that Marilyn used to put on her face, but as a more healthy choice for Ana's skin. We also used lots and lots of individual lashes. They were piled on every morning into a shape that was a little bit more Marilyn. There are quite a few of them and it took a minute to apply. Then we had to reshape Ana’s mouth because the bow shape that Marilyn had was a little different than Ana’s mouth, so we’d redraw that and then find lipsticks that could work in color, in black and white or both."
De Armas and Adrien Brody as Monroe and husband Arthur Miller.
Photo: Netflix
Did the division between Norma Jeane (the person) and Marilyn (the persona) impact how you approached hair and makeup?
TRK: "Once we figured out that if I pulled back on some of the makeup, Ana looked more like herself and less like Marilyn, we knew we had to maintain some level of makeup on her almost all the time. And when we were trying to show her at home versus not at home, lip colors would play a part in that. But one day Andrew explained that on any given day, we don't know where she's been, we don't know where she's going, and we don’t know if her makeup artist has come to the house, so for her to have a Marilyn look a lot of the time not only helped us stay in the space of Marilyn and not Ana, but it also made you feel like she was on this wheel, always working. There were also times when you felt like as much as she didn't want to be Marilyn, she was still somewhat attached to her. It helped with the understanding of her struggles between Marilyn and Norma Jeane. She wanted both of those worlds and just couldn't find the balance—Norma Jeane would lose herself into Marilyn. But at the same time, she still needs Marilyn. Jamie-Leigh would also help sell some of the more casual looks with the movement and the wave of the hair."
JLM: "I was able to deconstruct it and sometimes not even do the roller set. I’d try to find Norma Jeane's natural texture, a little bit more of a wash and wear kind of look, like the times that she's at the beach with (Arthur Miller, her third husband). For times like those, there's not so much styling involved. It’s just Norma Jeane at home and natural. So I was able to push it a little bit further than Tina was because I didn't have those restrictions."
This year, the conversation around Marilyn's wardrobe has been so extensive. What about Marilyn's approach style made her such a perennial style icon?
Jennifer Johnson: “In her off-duty life as Norma Jeane, she was really interested in being taken seriously and she really did have a uniform. When she started working with the Actors Studio, she was in New York and she was wearing Anne Klein in the ‘50s. A lot of those garments were referencing French style and intelligentsia. I think it was important for her to feel that she was part of an artistic community and not a pinup. And so she looked for signifiers in her day-to-day wear that would instantly mark you as an intellectual—that would be a black turtleneck. Black was a color of funerals and maybe you would have a premiere with a sexy little black dress, but it really was a color worn in intellectual circles. Also wearing pants was really important in the movie, so your gaze would be taken away from her body and would be really placed on her interior—on her mental workings, on her intellect, on her psychological state. Having a uniform that allowed her to free herself of Marilyn was really important.”
De Armas in one of Monroe's casual looks.
Photo: Netflix
How did William Travilla’s approach to costuming Marilyn influence your approach to creating these looks on Ana?
JJ: “William Travilla was a great costume designer, but he was also kind of a great stylist. He designed costumes with a fashion sensibility. They're very playful. There’s a humor and a whims whimsy to his costumes and a lightness to the spirit of his designs. I know from the research I did that he could easily pivot. He wasn't precious in his approach. There's a levity to his designs that feels a bit more fashion-informed. He was a trendsetter. He did the pink dress for the Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and he also did the famous pleated dress in The Seven Year Itch. Those dresses still work today and many designers have taken inspiration from those pieces. I find that really satisfying because both sides of Marilyn influenced the way that people dress—just look at Kim Kardashian.”
Why was the Diamond's Are a Girl's Best Friend costume most difficult to recreate?
JJ: "We thought we understood the fabric and then we tested it and it was completely wrong. The color was so off. We realized that the original color needed to be a really hot pink, something almost fluorescent, like highlighter pink. It felt really uncomfortable in person. I actually haven't seen the dress since we made the film in 2019 and I would love to look at it again because I think that it's probably a bit garish in person.
The big challenge with that dress was how it moved. We were trying to figure out how William Travilla made that moment work in a column dress with a big bow on the back and we learned that when he was working on the dress, he borrowed pool table fabric from the art department at Fox Studios next door. He got a bolt of green felt and backed the dress with that. We thought of doing some of those little hidden things for Ana, as a nice little Easter egg of a present for her, but it was too hot on set."
De Armas recreating Monroe's iconic Diamond's Are a Girl's Best Friend moment in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Photo: Netflix
Are you excited to see how this film affects the way that people dress over the next couple of years?
JJ: “Yeah, maybe the fifties glamorous and maybe we'll also see an interest in the black turtleneck and the capri pant. We've had a lot of big silhouettes recently so it would be interesting to see if that comes back. Her style is also really timeless. I think she was quite minimalist and elegant in real life. You can see it even in her final house that she passes away in. In the movie, that's her real house—that was where she had died. And that house is so lovely. When we were inside, it had a beautiful energy to it. When you look at photos of even her house decor, she really had lovely sensibility of that minimal effort that takes effort.”