Marilyn Monroe’s Personal Elizabeth Arden Makeup

From the estate of Marilyn Monroe: A grouping of Elizabeth Arden cosmetics, including a small container of “Pat-A-Crème” Fashion Makeup, an Elizabeth Arden eyebrow pencil in black, and an Elizabeth Arden mascara wand in dark brown.

The jar of Pat-A-Cream makeup remains exactly as Marilyn left it, with distinct finger trails and indentations visible in the remaining product.

Photos from 1959 when Marilyn was in Chicago promoting Some Like it Hot show the jar of creme on the makeup table in front of her. Other Elizabeth Arden products are also visible.

Related Collection Artifacts

• Marilyn Monroe Signed Elizabeth Arden Salon Receipt

History

Elizabeth Arden New York City Present Day.

The building’s image changed somewhat in 1930 when a bright red door was installed in the building’s store at 691 Fifth Avenue heralding the flagship salon for Elizabeth Arden, who was formerly known as Florence Nightingale Graham. The Elizabeth Arden Company and its salon are still tenants today. The building set a new retail leasing record in 1970 when Gucci agreed to pay $100 a square foot a year for the corner store.

From the Book Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend by James Haspiel in which he describes Marilyn’s walk to Elizabeth Arden in New York City.

“On a mild mid-morning…I was walking towards the Gladstone and as I arrived at the entrance I came upon a teenager standing outside with an 8-mm camera aimed directly at the hotel’s revolving door, which was already in motion. Marilyn came awhirl through the door and literally performed a 360-degree turn for his home-movie camera. She was dressed in an elegant black suit with a fur collar, her lustrous hair shoulder length, and was fully made up. Dazzling! (see photos above) She was about to walk from 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue over to the fifth Avenue beauty salon of Elizabeth Arden. So I walked side by side with her; naturally, to the utter frustration of this kid who was walking backwards with his movie camera pointed at us, because I was now unavoidably in all of his wonderful footage of Marilyn. In fact, although I sought him out over the following years, he never allowed me to see the candid film he took of Marilyn and me walking across town that day.

As she walked her famous walk in her very high black stiletto heels, cars and trucks just pulled over to the curb and drivers emerged from them shouting “Marilyn! Marilyn!” When we finally got the three blocks over to Fifth Avenue, we then had to walk uptown to 54th-55th Streets. As we arrived at the doorway to Elizabeth Arden’s salon, I heard the nearby sounds of an automobile crashing, and looked over to see a taxicab driver whose head was bobbing out of the passenger-side front window of his cab, the vehicle itself now embedded in the back end of a delivery truck! He had a gleeful smile on his face and was hollering, “Marilyn!” I tapped her on the shoulder and exclaimed “See what you did!” She gave me a very “Marilynesque” laugh and swept rather grandly into the salon.”