Kim Kardashian shocked everyone with her 2022 Met Gala look.
The reality star arrived at the event on Monday, May 2, wearing the same bedazzled dress by Jean Louis that iconic actress Marilyn Monroe wore in 1962 when she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John. F. Kennedy on his 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden.
The crystal-studded dress was dubbed as the “world’s most expensive dress” by Guinness World Record after it was acquired at an auction by Ripley’s Believe it or Not! for $4.8 million. The exact amount reached up to $5 million, auction fees included.
So how did the beauty mogul come up with the look after her Balenciaga ensemble last year? She told Vogue, “The idea really came to me after the gala in September last year. I thought to myself, what would I have done for the American theme if it had not been the Balenciaga look? What’s the most American thing you can think of? And that’s Marilyn Monroe.”
She continued, “For me the most Marilyn Monroe moment is when she sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ to JFK, it was that look. Nowadays everyone wears sheer dresses, but back then that was not the case … In a sense, it’s the original naked dress. That’s why it was so shocking.”
It was difficult to get her hands on the dress but it was more challenging for her to slip into it. According to the 41-year-old SKIMS founder, she lost 16 pounds in three weeks. She told La La Anthony, “It was like preparing for a role.”
She also bleached her hair platinum blond to resemble Monroe and completed the look with a white fur shrug. The team at Ripley’s didn’t believe she could pull it off which challenged her all the more.
This isn’t the first time that she sacrificed something for the sake of fashion. For the “Camp”-themed Met Gala in 2019, she took breathing lessons so that she could wear a corset under her Theirry Mugler dress. That time, she wasn’t able to sit or use the restroom for the whole night.
Kardashian and her present boyfriend Pete Davidson arrived together at the event. The Saturday Night Live star wore Dior Men.
