Why was Kim Kardashian allowed to wear Marilyn Monroe’s dress for the 2022 Met Gala?

Kim Kardashian is set to make her return to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the 2023 Met Gala after it was believed that this year’s host, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, wouldn’t extend an invitation to the Kardashian family.

Ahead of her Karl Lagerfeld-themed look, in honor of the 2023 theme, we’re looking back at why the reality TV star was allowed to wear one of the most iconic dresses of the past century: Marilyn Monroe’s Bob Mackie dress that she wore when she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to then-President Kennedy in 1962.

Why did Kim K want to wear Marilyn Monroe’s dress?

The theme for the 2022 Met Gala was ‘In America: An Anthology of Fashion’, which, according to the official Met Museum website, “explores defining moments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American fashion.”

The 2022 theme was part two of 2021′s ‘In America: A Lexicon of Fashion’ theme. For 2021, Kardashian famously wore an all-black Zentai-style bodysuit, which covered her from head to toe–including her face–which many found to either be odd or avant-garde.

But Kardashian’s decision to pursue Monroe’s dress was instantly met with controversy. The Bob Mackie-designed dress was made specifically for Monroe’s body measurements, and she was famously sewn into the skin-tight dress before she took to the stage to sing happy birthday to the president.

“The idea really came to me after the gala in September last year. I thought to myself, what would I have done for the American theme if it had not been the Balenciaga look? What’s the most American thing you can think of? And that’s Marilyn Monroe,” Kardashian told Vogue of her decision to wear the dress in 2022.

“For me the most Marilyn Monroe moment is when she sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ to JFK, it was that look.”

Why did Ripley’s Believe It or Not! allow Kim K to wear the dress?

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! purchased the famous dress for $4.8 million in 2016, where it was then kept in a temperature-controlled vault in their Orlando museum.

The museum initially rejected Kardashian’s request to wear the dress for the Met Gala. That is, until her mother, Kris Jenner, stepped in.

In an episode of their reality show ‘The Kardashians’, it was revealed that Jenner had persuaded the museum to allow her daughter to wear the dress, although it was not explained how she did so.

“I flew all the way to Florida to try on the Marilyn dress at Ripley’s,” Kardashian, 42, said on the episode.

“They were not going to let me wear this dress, they were not even going to let me try it on until Kris Jenner calls... And I was like, ‘Please mom, if you make this happen, I’ll marry you.’ I would’ve done anything.”

When the museum shared a video of the reality star trying on the dress on social media, the video was with met with outcry that Kardashian, who does not have the same body measurements as Marilyn Monroe, was destroying the dress.

“I thought it was a big mistake,” Mackie said of the Kardashian wearing the dress he designed. “[Marilyn] was a goddess. A crazy goddess, but a goddess. She was just fabulous. Nobody photographs like that. And it was done for her. It was designed for her. Nobody else should be seen in that dress.”

After the event, Ripley’s released a statement clarifying that Kardashian “did not, in any way, damage the garment in the short amount of time it was worn at the Met Gala.”

It’s unclear what Kardashian is planning to wear for the 2023 Met Gala, or whether it will be as controversial.