Marilyn Monroe is one of the iconic stars within the cultural zeitgeist, inspiring countless retellings of her life and profession through movies and TV shows.

The most recent is Netflix’s “Blonde,” which stars Ana de Armas as Monroe. The film, which debuted on the Venice Film Festival earlier this month and hits Netflix Sept. 28, has received rave reviews for de Armas’ performance and transformation into Monroe, which took multiple hours every day.

Directed by Andrew Dominik, “Blonde” enlisted costume designer Jennifer Johnson, hair department head Jaime Leigh McIntosh and makeup department head Tina Roesler Kerwin to assist transform de Armas into Monroe. 

Each morning on set, de Armas would spend roughly two to a few hours within the makeup chair with Kerwin and McIntosh, who began off her transformation with a prosthetic bald cap to cover de Armas’ dark hairline and provides a foundation for her blonde wigs. Kerwin then bleached and minimized de Armas’ natural eyebrows and applied false lashes to make the actress’ eye shape match Monroe’s.

“We went through all the pieces we could — every movie, every research book, every fan site — anything we could get our hands on,” Kerwin said about her approach to de Armas’ makeup. We at all times start with the script and what the director is in search of specifically and what number of recreations we needed to do. Then you definately just dive in and hit the bottom running and see what number of you possibly can get right. It was a giant responsibility because Marilyn has so many fans still and everybody to some extent knows what Marilyn looks like, but there are some individuals who really know what Marilyn looks like. To honor Ana, to honor Andrew and to honor Marilyn, it was so much. It was a responsibility that we took very seriously.” 

“Blonde” is a dramatized retelling of Monroe’s life and profession ranging from her childhood. The film follows Monroe initially of her profession and highlights her ups and downs within the film industry, in addition to her romantic relationships with figures like playwright Arthur Miller (played by Adrien Brody) and baseball legend Joe DiMaggio (played by Bobby Cannavale). 

For the hair, makeup and costume heads, authenticity was of the utmost importance for the film considering “Blonde” recreated lots of Monroe’s most famous looks. 

“I felt like as a dressing up designer, I had to essentially pay tribute to those original designs in a extremely loving way that also showed I used to be being attentive to how special they’re,” Johnson said. “It’s easy to repeat stuff, nevertheless it’s so much harder to recreate it. It’s almost like a unique thing, you recognize? Like recreating can also be imbuing it with a spirt — just like the labor that went into it and the quantity of hands sewing it and having all the pieces done in the best way they might have been doing originally.” 

Two of Monroe’s most iconic looks that were recreated for “Blonde” are the pink dress she wears within the 1953 film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” and the white pleated halter top dress she wears within the 1955 film “The Seven 12 months Itch.” Each iconic dresses were originally designed by costume designer William Travilla. 

For each costumes, Johnson desired to stay as authentic and true to the unique as possible. She looked into the actual techniques and fabrics Travilla used and tried to pay homage to the designer. 

“For the particular looks, it was my job to attach the dots and investigate any missing pieces, especially with construction of costumes and really delving deep into our recreations, it was incredibly vital to do this forensic work and get all the way down to how those designs were originally made,” she said. “Then, even have the flexibility to not be so married to the unique that it felt suffocating, so it was at all times on my mind to maintain all the pieces very naturalistic looking even when it was a recreation. It needed to have its own life outside of Marilyn and needed to turn into a part of our movie.” 

Considered one of the largest challenges the department heads were presented with was the film’s switch between black and white and coloured scenes. They explained that sometimes they knew beforehand if a scene can be in color or not, but oftentimes didn’t know or were made aware moments before filming. This mainly impacted the usage of certain colours, which affected Johnson and Kerwin.

“Lip colours were the largest challenge — finding lip colours that will work in black and white,” Kerwin said. “We had a pre-shoot day where we were doing about 36 different images that day. It was a terrific crash course in trying lots and numerous lip colours. I ultimately landed on some that worked in color, some that worked in black and white and a pair that worked in each.”

While de Armas’ beauty look remained relatively the identical throughout the movie, Kerwin and McIntosh wanted the sweetness to reflect Monroe’s transitions through her life and her ups and downs. 

“Marilyn is thought for being a classic, iconic beauty — and fortunately for us, so is Ana,” Kerwin said. “We just had to construct on that and find our Marilyn in Ana. It was also fun to wreck her sometimes and make it not perfect or glamorous — there’s a variety in how she looks. We had some giggles sometimes after we got the possibility to wreck her, nevertheless it’s Marilyn and you possibly can’t get away from that within the hair, makeup and costumes.” 

De Armas’ each day transformations were key to the film, given Monroe’s long-reigning status as a fashion icon, the artists said.

“Those costumes are within the zeitgeist of the world — especially that white dress with the halter top and pleats — it’s a component of who she is, it’s a part of her icon,” Johnson said. “You’re never going to have her icon be the nude pinup, though everyone knows that photo. Nevertheless it really is about that white dress. I believe that embodies her elegance and that she was a component of a Hollywood system that was outputting amazing work and had beautiful designs coming out of it.”