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Marilyn Monroe dress sells for $4.6m

Beverly Hills - The pleated ivory dress that blew around Marilyn Monroe in an iconic scene from The Seven Year Itch sold for $4.6m at a weekend auction of Hollywood costumes - far exceeding its estimate.

The so-called "subway" dress is perhaps the most recognisable in movie history. In Billy Wilder's 1955 movie, a passing train sent a draft through a grate as Monroe giddily stood above it proclaiming, "Isn't it delicious?"

The William Travilla design was estimated to sell for between $1m and $2m, the crown jewel at a 12-hour auction of nearly 600 costumes and pieces of memorabilia being sold by actress Debbie Reynolds in Beverly Hills on Saturday.

Dreams were dashed

Monroe's red-sequined dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes went for $1.2m. Its pre-sale estimate was $200 000 to $300 000. Audrey Hepburn's Ascot dress from My Fair Lady,  carrying the same estimate, sold for $3.7m.

Reynolds, 79, began amassing the impressive collection when she was a young actress under contract at MGM. When the studio auctioned off everything except its real estate in 1970, she turned a pastime into what she called an "obsession".

But her dream of displaying her beloved costumes in a museum was dashed when a Tennessee project went bankrupt in 2006, and she was forced to sell them to pay back creditors. "Now everyone has the opportunity to own them," Reynolds said.

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