Ana de Armas On Channeling Marilyn Monroe Through Style

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, received a 14-minute standing ovation at its grand premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday. The film offers a fictionalized chronicling of Monroe’s inner life as she grappled with her superstardom. De Armas was drawn to the project not only as an opportunity to slip into Monroe’s signature glamorous fashions (all of which are costume-designed by Jennifer Johnson), but to showcase a different side of the vampy Old Hollywood star. “I would like—more than people learning about Marilyn Monroe—it is my hope that they can see Norma Jean, and they can connect with her and feel her,” de Armas tells Vogue. “That they are able to also see her pain and her vulnerability. I would like the audience to rediscover who she was, in the sense of who the woman was underneath the character of Marilyn Monroe, and discover her human side.”

For the film’s premiere on Thursday, it was important for de Armas to pay tribute to Monroe’s fashion signatures. Her pink, hand-pleated satin mousseline gown by Louis Vuitton did just that. “The inspiration for the dress was to pay tribute to iconic dresses that [Marilyn] wore, whether in films or in real life,” says de Armas. “I wanted to combine the silhouette of the white dress she wore from Seven Year Itch, but also the color of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I wanted something light that felt like it was floating—because I felt it was more like her, like her spirit.” The breezy gown featured over 60 meters of fabric and took over 350 hours of work. “[Nicolas Ghesquière] really worked on making the dress feel Marilyn and still Vuitton,” adds de Armas’s stylist Samantha McMillan. “The entire dress is hand-pleated, and the pleated belt is very Nicolas. It nicely finishes and modernizes the silhouette.”

Hairstylist Jenny Cho and makeup artist Melanie Inglessis paid homage to Monroe in their own ways, too. Cho nodded to Monroe’s polished 1950s-style waves. “I wanted to capture the glamour of the ’50s to go with the beautiful Louis Vuitton dress,” she says. “I blow-dried hair with mousse, then pin-curled sections with a 1-inch curling iron and set to cool down. Then, I brushed them into a shape and misted with a strong hairspray for hold.” Using Estée Lauder products, Inglessis wanted to create “a timeless look that would radiate from within…where the emphasis is on Ana’s natural beauty.” She created a soft eye, radiant skin, and a nude pout—using the Pure Color lipstick in Knockout Nude (184) and the Double Wear lip pencil in Tawny—to “complement her Marilyn Monroe-inspired dress.” The details even came down to the fingertips, where manicurist Ashlie Johnson says “the vision I had was that a few diamonds just fell off her neck and landed on her nails. I went with a tint instead of a solid shade; It’s clean, simple and just as glamorous as Ana and Marilyn.”

Below, see exclusive photos from de Arma’s Blonde premiere look at Venice.