A Fashion Show for the Man Who Dressed Marilyn Monroe
As costume designer for the 1955 movie “The Seven-Year Itch,” Bill Travilla found himself scratching his head over a troublesome scene.
The script placed Marilyn Monroe in New York City on a hot, sticky summer day. Travilla had to figure out how best to show off Monroe’s incredible beauty in the midst of all that gray ugliness.
“I’m going to have my precious baby standing over a grate,” he remembers thinking. “I want her to look fresh and clean.”
His solution: A simple pleated halter dress in ecru georgette that, as the world now knows, happens to catch a current of air just right.
“The dress was cool and clean in a dirty, dirty city,” he says.
Travilla designed costumes for 11 of Monroe’s movies. He will show his most famous Monroe designs at “The Center of Fashion,” a fashion show presented by The Guilds of the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa on Sept. 18.
Originals of the gowns won’t be modeled because they have been lost or sold. Travilla himself discarded many of Monroe’s old costumes years ago. “I threw them out,” he says. “I had no idea of their value. It’s incredible what that lady means today.”
Designs to be featured in the show include the gold-pleated gown he designed for Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and the “Seven-Year Itch” dress, Travilla’s favorite creation. “It’s the most famous dress in the world,” he says.
Travilla shared a close working relationship with Monroe. She was the perfect vessel for his designs.
“If you’ve ever known paradise, that was Marilyn,” he says, still sounding smitten with the platinum-haired star. “She was the most feminine woman, the most perfect girl I’d ever known. I can’t remember a flaw.”
To him, Monroe was a child playing the role of a Hollywood star.
“Marilyn was two people. One would come in for a fitting, giggling and darling. She’d sit in my lap like a 5-year-old girl. Then, in a split second, she’d be the most sensuous woman who ever lived.”
When describing her off-screen behavior, Travilla often sounds like an indulgent parent.
“She was always late for an appointment,” he says. “If I said 10 a.m., I’d be lucky if she’d be there at 4 p.m., if not the next day. Of course, she’d be calling all day saying, ‘I’ll be there, I’ll be there.’ ”
The two would go to lunch at a cafe on the studio lot, where producers and actors would be hunched over tables noisily talking shop. Monroe would show up in a glamorous wrap-around negligee with huge ostrich sleeves that Travilla had designed for her.
“Not all stars had the guts to do it,” Travilla recalls. “When she’d walk in, all talk would stop. She was so breathtakingly beautiful. Bette Davis would see her, and her fork would stop in midair.”
Travilla, now in his 60s, has always had an eye for beauty.
Born on scenic Santa Catalina Island, he spent his childhood exploring the island and diving into the ocean to study underwater treasures. His father, Jack, set a record for long-distance underwater swimming that has never been broken.
As he grew up, Travilla discovered a new kind of beauty. He began sketching women, then drawing clothes that would make them look more beautiful.
“Designing is the same as drawing,” he says. “It’s all lines.”
In Hollywood, he worked under contract with Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox. He won an Academy Award for “The Adventures of Don Juan” with Errol Flynn and received four additional Oscar nominations.
Travilla took a hiatus from fashion and films during the “jeans era,” retiring in 1970.
“My kind of clothes weren’t needed,” he says. “It was a bad scene for women.”
After spending six years in Spain on a beach near Cartagena, swimming and diving much as he did in Catalina during his boyhood, he returned to Los Angeles in 1977. Since his return, he’s continued to design costumes for film and television, receiving an Emmy for “Movieola” in 1980 and for “Dallas” in 1985.
Travilla prides himself on designing clothes that are pretty, with lines that flatter the figure.
“My clothes reflect my love for women. I want women to be pretty. That’s how I dressed Marilyn. She was totally covered, not revealed. In all of the films Marilyn has done, she has never been vulgar in clothes.”
Travilla has always stood apart from the rest of couture designers. He shuns other designers’ fashion shows.
“I won’t go see them. I don’t like to see their fashions. I have no interest,” he says. “I get my ideas by going away from fashion.”
He draws inspiration for design by traveling alone to Africa and riding deep into jungles not recommended for tourists.
“I go to really rough places. The people are beautiful--the colors, the warriors, the beads. The more primitive the people, the better.”
It’s a chance to get away from the celebrity that goes with being a costume designer for Marilyn Monroe.
“Ladies grab me and ask, ‘Do you like what I’m wearing?’ ” he says, shaking his head. “I love being with people who take me as I am.” A man with an eye for beauty.
Travilla will be introduced during the benefit fashion show, which begins at 2:30 p.m. Sept. 18 at Segerstrom Hall in the Performing Arts Center.
A champagne reception will be held in the lobbies of the center at 1:30 p.m.
Sponsored by Fashion Island in Newport Beach and South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, the show will feature fashions from 22 stores and boutiques and couture fashions from Paris.
A two-act performance produced by Carlton Burnett will include multiple set changes, music, lasers and dancers as well as more than 100 models, most of them guild members.
Tickets range from $10 to $75 and are on sale at the center’s box office or by calling (714) 740-2000 or (213) 480-3232.
