World’s most famous dresses from Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Hepburn’s may sell for millions – but they came with an unfortunate price tag

THESE famous dresses may look a million dollars – but those who wore them paid an unfortunate price.

Marilyn Monroe’s diamond-encrusted “Happy Birthday Mr President” gown sold for £3.87million at auction last Friday.

While the dress is a stunning one-off, it is the tragic months that followed Marilyn’s performance that added to its value for fashion obsessives.

Other gowns that fetched thousands at auction belonged to stars with tales of distress and despair.

Here are six of history’s most famous garments and the sad tales of women who wore them.

MARILYN MONROE

SHE was America’s sweetheart and he was the golden boy of US politics yet both Marilyn Monroe and President John F Kennedy’s lives ended in tragedy.

Just three months after Marilyn sang happy birthday to JFK in the iconic Jean Louis gown with 2,500 crystals, she died from a drug overdose.

He was shot dead a year later. It is rumoured that part of the reason Marilyn was so depressed leading up to her death was that JFK refused to take her phone calls after bedding her.

The figure-hugging dress was so tight that the blonde bombshell had to be sewn into it.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum paid £3.9m for the dress at auction last week.

AUDREY HEPBURN

THE world’s most iconic black dress is probably Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy number as worn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

She played Holly Golightly in the 1961 movie and the frock sold for £467,200 in 2006.

Had the novel’s author Truman Capote got his way, Marilyn would have had the starring role.

Just like Monroe, Audrey had a tumultuous love life. She was haunted by a string of miscarriages.

She died in 1993, aged 63.

MADONNA

MADONNA’s pink cone bra debuted on her 1990 world tour but lived long after in the imagination.

It is no wonder the Jean Paul Gaultier silk lingerie fetched £42,000 when it went under the hammer at Christie’s in London four years ago.

But not everyone was a fan of Madonna’s racy image.

Both the Pope and the Church of England criticised her erotic performances, which included simulating sex.

Her personal life was also in tatters, with the tour starting just a year after her turbulent marriage to actor Sean Penn ended.

GERI HORNER

RARELY has a tea towel been worth as much as the one worn by Spice Girl Geri to the Brit Awards in 1997.

She asked her sister to sew the Union Jack tea towel on to her dress as a show of patriotism and it made the front pages of newspapers.

But Geri was secretly suffering from depression and quit the band the following year.

The dress raised an impressive £41,320 when auctioned four months later.

JUDY GARLAND

THE sweat-stained blue gingham pinafore worn by Judy Garland in 1939’s Wizard of Oz sold for £1.03million at auction in New York just last year.

She was just 16 when she landed the Oz role but by then was already in the grip of an addiction to amphetamines.

Judy, who married five times, died from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 47 in 1969.

PRINCESS DIANA

THE off-the-shoulder, midnight blue velvet gown, designed by Victor Edelstein, became as iconic as Princess Di’s wedding dress.

She captivated the American public when she twirled round the dancefloor with actor John Travolta at a White House state dinner in 1985.

The gown became known as The Travolta Dress.

But behind closed doors, Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles was in turmoil.

Following rumours of affairs, they divorced in 1996 and a year later Diana died in a car crash.

The dress was sold at auction for £240,000 in 2013 and will be featured in Kensington Palace’s Diana: Her Fashion Story exhibition in February.