When Marilyn Monroe was a rising star in Hollywood, she famously wore an Idaho potato sack for a series of promotional cheesecake photos in 1951.
There are a couple of stories as to why. One is that it was a promotional stunt by Twentieth Century Fox to show the world that the starlet was so beautiful, she could look stunning even in a potato sack.
The more entertaining version involves a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel that a 24-year-old Monroe attended. She allegedly showed up wearing a revealing red dress that a newspaper columnist deemed “cheap and vulgar” and said she would have been better off “wearing a potato sack.” Fox’s public relations department had fun with it and Monroe got
