The Sew Friendly Marilyn Dress

June 15, 2020

She's intelligent, beautiful, sexy and ambitious. She's the famous starlet of the 1950s. Marilyn Monroe was the ultimate Blonde Bombshell, an accomplished dramatic actress, singer with the looks and figure to die for. Would most of us want to be even a little bit like her, possibly in one way or another?

Now let's get onto what I'm supposed to be writing about..... the blue dress Marilyn Monroe wears when photographed with Arthur Miller in 1957.

We have been contacted numerous times, 'I love this dress, but it's not in my size', and as you will know vintage sizing can sometimes be quite small as 1950's women had smaller frames than today. We decided to take the plunge and re-grade the pattern to fit the modern-day woman of today in sizes to fit Bust 33"(84cm)-41"(104cm) - (UK8-16), (US4-10). Thankfully with the help of our amazing, loyal and hard-working pattern testers, who live in various countries all over the world, the Marilyn Dress is now a huge success.

Reviews and constructions:

If you would like to read an excellent blog on how The Woolly Whiskers made her dress fit perfectly, then please click here for Part 1 and here for part 2, here for part 3.

You can see @Scandinavianabroad's REVIEW and process blog here and her youtube here.

@samanthalovestosew construction here

The Marilyn Dress is for the beginner sewer. It has clear concise instructions and easy to follow diagrams. To top this, a Marilyn Dress 'sew-along adventures' community grew on Instagram through its founder Anya Mackay who have supported beginner dressmakers through the process, so if you get stuck at any point, they are more than happy to guide and help you in any way they can. All of this happened during lock-down which will be in our next blog 'Sewing Friendships'.