The world keeps asking “What size was Marilyn Monroe?”

According to measurements from Marilyn Monroe’s dressmaker:
Height: 5 feet, 5½ inches
Weight: 118-140 pounds
Bust: 35-37 inches
Waist: 22-23 inches
Hips: 35-36 inches
Bra size: 36D

Marilyn’s figure was an unusually dramatic hour-glass.  A collector displayed a bunch of her most famous costumes in London recently, “they had to get a special mold made for the corset and swimwear dummies in the exhibition because Monroe was such an extreme hourglass shape that no off-the-peg dummies existed in those measurements.”

Depending on the designer, a British 10 might translate as an 8, a 6, or even a 4. And vintage clothes of that era were cut slim, intended to be worn with serious girdles, so take this into account. The answer? There’s no “exact” number. All we can know for sure is that Marilyn Monroe was a gorgeous, dramatically curvaceous woman with a physique heavier and curvier than that which is en vogue now.

Was Marilyn Monroe Really A Size 16? [Huffington Post]
Was Marilyn Monroe A Size 16? [London Times]
Downsizing Figures [Chicago Sun-Times]
With Respect to Roseanne [The New Yorker]
Marilyn Monroe Facts [Marilyn Monroe Pages]