Marylin Monroe and that Italian Connection |

As a follow-up to yesterday's post let's rediscover today some interesting connections between Monroe and Italian designers.

In his autobiography entitled Shoemaker of Dreams Salvatore Ferragamo (already mentioned in connection with Marilyn in yesterday's post) wrote:

“The shape of your foot talks to me. I can tell you this, signora: if you have an extremely high-arched foot you are artistic. You can be artistic without possessing a high-arched foot, but you cannot be high-arched and not artistic. The higher the arch, the more pronounced the ability (…) Many years ago, in Hollywood, an unknown girl walked into my salon. As I looked at her foot I said: ‘Are you an artist?’ She shook her head. She was a secretary, she told me, and had no pretensions to film acting or stage acting or any other form of art. ‘Nevertheless,’ I told her, ‘you are an artist, and one day you will find the art that will satisfy you and you will become famous.’ A few years later she wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, her name was Anita Loos.”

In 1950 Ferragamo created for Marilyn Monroe the “Honey” a stiletto heeled shoe with black satin upper and rhinestone decoration.

At the end of the ‘50s, Ferragamo also created for Monroe a pair of red court shoes covered in Swarovski crystals.

In 1957 the Fontana Sisters did instead sketches for designs for Marilyn Monroe (the pink embroidered motifs on the black satin top, trousers, scarf and slippers in the sketch in this post were supposed to be made with hundreds of corals).

They were shown to the actress at New York's Hotel Plaza (the Fontana Sisters' temporary showroom), but the designs were in the end never made.

The original sketches are still preserved at the Fondazione Micol Fontana in Rome.

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