Tuesday Textures: How the Academy Museum Designs a Marilyn Monroe Mannequin

Inside the Academy Museum’s Marilyn Monroe Mannequin Challenge

Today’s Tuesday Textures goes full Hollywood legend with Marilyn Monroe — one of cinema’s defining blonde bombshells and, just as importantly, a performer whose costumes now require some very careful behind-the-scenes engineering.

At the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, right here in our Los Angeles neck of the woods, costume and textile conservator Melinda Kerstein and senior objects conservator Sophie Hunter tackle a deceptively complicated question: how do you design the right mannequin for a historic Marilyn Monroe dress without putting the garment itself at risk?

The answer is definitely not grabbing a standard department-store mannequin and hoping for the best. Historic costumes can be fragile, altered, unusually proportioned or shaped around the performer who originally wore them. A display form has to support the garment from underneath while avoiding new stress on seams, fabric, closures and structure.

That challenge takes on extra weight inside the museum’s current Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon exhibition, which runs through February 28, 2027. The show brings together hundreds of original objects and an extensive group of Monroe’s screen-worn costumes, including pieces from Love Happy, Some Like It Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and her unfinished final film, Something’s Got to Give.

The process is part preservation, part sculpture and part old-fashioned problem solving. Every adjustment has to serve the costume first. The goal is to recreate enough of Monroe’s silhouette for the clothing to read properly on display without stretching, distorting or overhandling material that was never meant to survive for generations.

It is the kind of museum work visitors usually never see, but it changes the way you look at the finished gallery. That perfectly presented dress is not simply hanging there. There is an entire conservation strategy underneath it.

Behind the Marilyn Monroe Mannequin Build

Take a closer look at the fitting, shaping and conservation work behind the Academy Museum’s custom support for Marilyn Monroe’s historic wardrobe.

Watch “How to Design the Perfect Marilyn Monroe Mannequin”

Kerstein and Hunter take viewers through the conservation challenge behind presenting Monroe’s historic wardrobe safely and accurately. Press play on the Academy Museum feature below.

Sources: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Academy Museum / YouTube.