Bombshell BEAUTY

A hundred years since MARILYN MONROE’s birth, her IMAGE, and how she CRAFTED it, remains as relevant as EVER

- TEXT BY GENEVIEVE MONSMA

Long before TikTok influencers were using contour as a verb and teaching followers how to create “siren eyes” and achieve “glazed donut” skin, there was Marilyn Monroe.

Add a mole, a swipe of red lipstick, and a blond wig to any white halter or strapless pink dress on Halloween and you're her; Monroe’s beauty has become that signature. You can spot her disciples in pop culture too, from Madonna to Anna Nicole Smith to Lil’ Kim and even Kim Kardashian. But her appeal now, as we commemorate her 100th birthday, has as much to do with the idea she represented as her actual beauty. She is a North Star of reinvention. Monroe’s legacy is the reminder that beauty isn’t just born; it can be made and remade.

You know the legend: Norma Jeane Mortenson—born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926—died 36 years later as Marilyn Monroe, a Hollywood icon immortalized as the comedic bombshell in films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, and Some Like It Hot. A century after her birth, her beauty continues to inspire. This summer alone, Monroe is the muse for new makeup launches and a new skincare brand, and she’s the subject of a sprawling and comprehensive exhibit at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

“Norma Jeane created Marilyn,” says Bryan Johns, a Hollywood collector and the cofounder of iS Clinical and the just-launched Icon Skincare, which was directly inspired by Monroe and her facialist, Madame Renna. (More on her later.)

Monroe was the careful architect of her own scene-stealing image, and she couldn't have done it without a team of image makers, most notably her longtime makeup artist, Allan “Whitey” Snyder. Together, they drew from other screen stars—Greta Garbo’s eyes, Rita Hayworth’s lips, Jean Harlow’s hair—quilting together the icy-blond sex symbol we know as “Marilyn Monroe.”