The 5 most expensive dresses ever sold at auction

There are an estimated five surviving Dorothy dresses that have moved through private collections since the Wizard of Oz premiered in 1939.

In 2019, Heritage Auctions sold a black and white variant of the gingham dress for $750,000.

The black and white dress is notable for being the only Dorothy dress that can be linked to specific scenes in the film. When Dorothy steps out of black-and-white Kansas and into technicolor Oz, Judy Garland’s body double Barbara Koshay can be seen wearing the dress. By rendering the normally blue dress in black the filmmakers were able to more smoothly show the transition between Kansas and Oz – with the scene quickly transitioning from Koshay in black to Garland in blue.

Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy were known both for their close working relationship and their close friendship.

In the years following Hepburn’s 1993 death, Givenchy would occasionally donate the actress’s costumes to charitable causes in her honor. This was the case with one of the three little black dresses that Hepburn wore in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

One dress remains in the fashion house’s archives and one is held by the Museo del Traje in Spain.

Givenchy donated the third to philanthropist Dominique Lapierre, who was raising funds for a school in Kolkata. In 2006, it sold for $923,187 at a Christie’s auction.

“I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools,” LaPierre said at the time.

Over the years, several of Princess Diana’s dresses have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. In December 2023, a trio of Diana’s custom-made gowns were each sold for upwards of $700,000 by Julien’s Auctions.

In the same auction, this celestial Jacques Azagury dress sold for a record-breaking $1.1 million – making it the most expensive dress worn by the princess. Diana originally wore the gown at a 1985 event in Florence, Italy. She wore it again in 1986 at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Few images are more iconic in film history than Marilyn Monroe in the Seven Year Itch, standing over a subway grate, while her ivory William Travilla cocktail dress billows up around her arms. For decades after Monroe’s death, Travila kept the dress in a private collection which he rarely showed to the public. Following Travila’s 1990 death, the dress moved between private owners, eventually ending up in actress Debbie Reynolds’ personal collection.

Reynolds acquired several notable film costumes, including pieces worn by Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando, in the hopes of establishing a Hollywood museum. The museum never came to fruition and Reynolds sold her collection in a 2011 Profiles in History Auction. Monroe’s dress proved to be Reynolds’ most valuable piece — selling for $4.6 million.

Another of Monroe’s iconic dresses – this one from her personal wardrobe – holds the record for the most expensive dress ever sold at auction.

Monroe famously wore the sheer, Bob Mackie evening gown while serenading President John F. Kennedy at a gala celebrating his 45th birthday. In 1999, the dress was sold to a private buyer at a Christie’s auction for $1,267,500. Ripley’s Believe or Not purchased the same dress through Julien’s Auctions for a record-setting $4.8 million in 2016.

Six years later, the dress was once again in the spotlight when Kim Kardashian wore the piece at the 2022 Met Gala. Kardashian wore the dress for just a few minutes but the decision still generated controversy – with many expressing concerns that the dress might pull and tear when worn by someone other than Monroe. Mackie described the decision as a “mistake” adding that the dress was designed for Monroe.

“Nobody photographs like [Monroe,]” he said. “Nobody else should be seen in that dress.”