The bidding paddles are raised at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, and the ghost of Marilyn Monroe is having a very good day. As the world marks what would have been her 100th birthday, the sale of her personal belongings, from the iconic 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President' gown to her well-worn make-up compacts, offers a peculiar glimpse into the machinery of fame.
For those who have followed the Monroe myth, these items are relics of a woman who was both a product and a prisoner of Hollywood. The dress, a diaphanous flesh-coloured creation, still seems to shimmer with the tension of that 1962 performance at Madison Square Garden. It is a piece of fabric, yes, but also a document of a moment when celebrity and politics danced a dangerous tango.
The make-up, a Chanel No. 5 bottle and a half-used lipstick, humanise a figure too often flattened into sex-symbol. We see the woman who fretted over her pores, who reapplied her rouge before the cameras.
Yet there is an uncomfortable spectacle here. The auction transforms Monroe's life into a cabinet of curiosities for the ultra-wealthy. The prices, estimated to reach into the millions, speak to a market that trades in memory.
For the fans queued outside, clutching copies of 'Some Like It Hot', the sale is a pilgrimage. But it also raises the question: at what point does reverence become exploitation? Monroe herself might have laughed, perhaps bitterly, at the irony.
She spent much of her career fighting for control of her image, and now her legacy is reduced to a sales record. Yet there is a deeper cultural shift at play. We are living in an age of nostalgia, a time when the past is repackaged as content.
Monroe’s 100th birthday is not just a commemoration; it is a brand extension. The auction house has understood that the hunger for authenticity, for a tangible connection to a lost golden age, is insatiable. Walking through the palatial showroom, watching collectors covet a pair of stilettos or a script annotated in her own hand, you feel the human cost of mythmaking.
Monroe was a woman who died alone, her phone untouched, her reputation in tatters. Now she is a saint of pop culture, her relics worshipped. But the crowds do not seem to see the irony.
They see a fairy-tale ending, bought and paid for. And perhaps that is the final tragedy: that even in death, Marilyn Monroe is still performing.
