Marilyn Monroe, natural beauty! PART 1

As part of my degree course we are looking at period makeup, and the one iconic look I think of immediately is the beautiful Marilyn Monroe.

During the 1940s and 1950s her natural yet stunning looks captured the whole world's attention and even after her death she is in my opinion the opitimy of beautiful!

So how am I going to attempt to create such an iconic look on myself during this time of lockdown???

RESEARCH AND PRACTICE!

My first task was to look at as many images of Marilyn as possible, identify the key features of what made her so iconic. I looked at hair and makeup and tried different techniques to replicate the look.

HAIR:

I tried a few different techniques to attempt to create the naturally curly, and columised curls that Marilyn was known for.

First of all I tried the 'curly girl' technique, this technique involves using smoothing products such as serum and hair oil on wet hair and then using a scrunching method with curl enhancing mousse to alter the natural shape of your hair and set it into a curl. The mousse 'casts' the hair and once fully dry you use the scrunching technique to 'break' the cast while the hair maintains the curl.

The result I got looked more like a 90s perm than a natural curl. It took a long time for my hair to dry naturally and my hair felt really crispy throughout the process. I did however notice a massive difference in the quality of my curl afterwards as my hair didn't feel frizzy due to the lack of heat treatment and from applying the serum and oil prior to the hair drying.

The next method I used was another method without the use of heat. This method is called the dressing gown curl. It's achieved my twisting damp hair around the rope of your dressing gown. I parted the hair in the middle, placed the dressing gown rope over my head and then sectioned off the hair twisting it piece by piece around the rope and then tying the rope at the bottom. This was then left in overnight to dry.

The result the next morning was a lovely curl but the look lacked the volume of the Marilyn look.

The last method I tried was to use heated rollers on my dry hair, this look gave me the most natural looking curl with added volume. Once the rollers had set the hair I used hairspray and back combing to add even more texture and volume to the hair. I also tucked up some hair to give the illusion of me having shorter hair.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of this blog post, makeup and fashion 🥰