What’s the first image that comes to mind when you think of Marilyn Monroe? There’s of course the iconic white dress that billows out over a subway grate while she cheekily attempts to hold the fabric down. Or the one where she’s sitting and enveloped by a massive white tulle skirt. Or the one where she’s in the slinky red number with the plunging neckline, her mouth painted the same shade as her dress. Oh yes, and then there’s the iconic… potato sack?

Courtesy Everett Collection

The story of how the blonde bombshell ended up in a fitted burlap sack has a couple of different versions, but the most likely/entertaining one is that in 1951, Monroe was attending a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel and was wearing a dress that was on the low-cut side, much to the chagrin of a female newspaper columnist. Apparently, the columnist said that Monroe was “cheap” and “vulgar,” and that she’d be better suited to wearing a potato sack.

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Monroe, whose sense of humor continues to be one of the most under-appreciated things about her, decided to take the columnist at her word — and producers at Twentieth Century Fox immediately organized a photoshoot for her, complete with a fitted “Idaho Potatoes” sack and red high heels. In a twist that surprised absolutely no one, she looked stunning. According to Monroe, the photos were so successful that an Idaho potato farmer actually sent her a whole sack of potatoes as a thank you for the generous publicity, but Monroe apparently never got to enjoy them, saying: “There was a potato shortage on then, and the boys in publicity stole them all. I never saw one.”

There’s also an alternate version of this story that says that producers at Twentieth Century Fox had gotten wind of someone commenting that Monroe was so beautiful that she could even make a potato sack look good, and recognized a good publicity opportunity, but that version is much less appealing than the catty columnist one, so let’s just go with that one instead.