Marilyn Monroe’s beauty secrets: The most surprising tips from Hollywood’s ultimate icon

Marilyn Monroe’s beauty secrets: The most surprising tips from Hollywood’s ultimate icon

Everyone has a preferred beauty routine, whether it’s on the simpler side (say, lip balm and mascara) or a full-on ritual that rivals the likes of Kim Kardashian. Of course, the queen of #IDidNotWakeUpLikeThis was the ultimate blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe.

The star’s beauty routine was rumoured to be three hours long, which explains why her make up artist Allan ‘Whitey’ Snyder was one of her closest friends. Monroe not only spent hours on her appearance, but she employed some seriously bizarre beauty hacks. For instance, she used to shock her system with ice baths to keep her skin tight and firm (hello, cryotherapy!) and wash her face four to five times a day out of fear of breakouts. This obsessive cleansing obviously caused extremely dry skin, so she would slather on coats of olive oil, Vaseline and Nivea face cream (the latter contributing to her famous glowing white skin). She was also known to sew marbles into her bra to ensure a permanent hard-nipple effect.

  

Marilyn also used Erno Laszlo products to keep her skin smooth. It helped her be camrea ready after a night of late parties.

When asked what she wore to bed, Marilyn famously replied 'Chanel No 5 of course.' She even spiked her bath with a few drops.

Marilyn liked to use 5 different shades to perfect that infamous pout. She would layer lighter and darker shades to give her lips a lush full look. Her favourite lipstick was produced by Max Factor although she did love Estee Lauder's lipsticks too.

Marilyn liked to high light her eyes to get the flirty/bedroom eye look Monroe literally called it the "Greta Garbo eye". Highlight the whole of your eye with a light shade and use a taupe

For quick, everyday slashes of eyeliner, most women are either brown or black pencil kinds of girls. But Snyder used a combination of both on Monroe, using Elizabeth Arden's classic eye pencils in both hues. He applied liner to her upper lids and waterlines, extending the lash lines with wings to elongate.But his most important trick? Sketching out a small white triangle on the outer corner of the eye, in between the top and lower liner wings, to make her eyes look bigger and wider. Additionally, he drew white on the waterlines and put a dot if red liner in the inner corner to make her eyes look even whiter.

  

Marilyn wanted her lashes longer and more voluminous with help from fringy falsies, but with natural-looking results. Therefore, Snyder would cut her false eyelash strips in half and apply them only to the outer corners of her eyes.