In an article marking the 49th anniversary of Marilyn’s death, The Smithsonian reflects on her trademark white gloves (one of the many pairs she owned is now held at Washington’s American History Museum.)
“They connoted a degree of style to the public, and they were as equally important as the gowns she wore. They completed the outfit,” curator Dwight Blocker Bowers says.
“Monroe was often spotted wearing this ladylike accoutrement,” wrote curator David H. Shayt in Smithsonian magazine in 2002. “Suggestive contradiction was the name of the game. Monroe’s gloves, invoking a coquettish nod to modesty, were belied by the plunging neckline.”
