IMAGE: Marilyn Monroe greets the troops during her Korea USO tour, 1954. From USMC Archives on flickr. Some rights reserved. (Monroe is actually wearing army fatigues in this cropped photo.)

One might speculate that since Milton Caniff based Miss Mizzou on Marilyn Monroe, that perhaps he saw a picture of her wearing a trench coat, and that inspired the look of the character. While some trench coat-like items were worn by Monroe before Miss Mizzou’s debut September 5th, 1952, I tend to think the evidence for this theory seems pretty flimsy. Caniff had many reasons for picking a trench coat for the character, but I’m not sure Marilyn Monroe’s fashion sense had much to do with it.

In my mind the closest thing that Monroe wore to a trench coat before 1952 was in a photograph session with Earl Leaf. He set up a session of photographs on May 17, 1950, where she wore what looks like a camel hair coat that looks somewhat similar to a trench coat. The only problem with these photographs being a source of inspiration is that it looks like they went unreleased at the time, and only saw general publication in the 1997 book “Marilyn Monroe: From Beginning to End.”

Post 1952, Monroe did actually wear a trench coat at least once; in the 1960 film “Let’s Make Love,” she dons a trench coat in a scene with Yves Montand. She doesn’t particularly look like Miss Mizzou in that film, but it’s interesting to see that Monroe did eventually dress like the character she inspired.

(Updated 04-22-18: Removed reference to a pinterest board that no longer exists.)