Last weekend I got to meet Marilyn Monroe’s dress.

It was (and will be through this weekend) at the Phoenix Art Museum, along with 100 other costumes from both recent and classic films.

Fun fact: The last time I was there was for Arts & Flowers. While I was waiting for Phillip (and getting lost on the second floor), he stopped in the lobby to talk to Phoenix Comicon volunteers. Which inspired us to go to the Con, where we stopped to talk to Phoenix Art Museum volunteers, snapped a photobooth pic for their Hollywood Costume Instagram contest, won it, and found ourselves in the Museum lobby again, thus completing the circle.

It was our destiny.

Officially, we’d won an Audrey+Marilyn grab bag. But when the Museum heard we hadn’t made it to the exhibition yet, they made tickets part of our prize. Super nice, right?!

This time we didn’t even get lost. The Hollywood Costume exhibit is on the first floor with a giant marquee.

You pass the velvet ropes and ticket taker (also a no photos sign). Before entering the main exhibit, you pause in a room with a large screen showing the most famous clips for the most well-known costumes inside. It’s like a sneak peek.

Inside, there’s exhibit information projected onto glass, teleprompter style. Costumes are clustered together based on themes. We snaked around the edges of these costume islands with the rest of the visitors, lines forming at points where people were lingering longer. In front of each costume is a stand with what looks like a script page that gives details on the costume and sometimes additional backstory. Woven throughout the exhibit, there are video interviews of actors and costume designers talking about what goes on behind the scenes, as well as animated projected images that explain the process.

We learned that costumes for movies have a lot to do: they need to be true to the time and the character, fit with the film’s artistic vision, and be practical for the actor to actually play their role in – whether they’re running or dancing or just wearing it during long days of shooting a scene.

I loved checking out the details of the costumes – the way the light shines on different fabrics, beaded gowns that must’ve weighed a ton, “dirt” and frayed edges added to make clothing look worn. Meryl Streep’s Mamma Mia! costume was made to sparkle. Darth Vader’s costume had more layers than we realized and buttons that reminded me of ’80s electronics (which, I guess, makes sense).

It’s always a little surreal to come face-to-face with something (or someone) that has previously only existed for you on a screen.

We spent awhile checking out Indiana Jones’s Raiders of the Lost Ark costume and the video that explained how the different components were designed, sourced, and adapted. You could see the individual distress marks in his signature leather jacket.

There was a whole section devoted to Elizabethan period costumes. One dress was hand-embroidered to match a painting exactly, while another costume designer felt it was more important that the clothing convey the right message to a modern audience than to be historically accurate in every detail. We also spotted two dresses used in films about Queen Elizabeth that expressed two very different takes on the same historical portrait.

The exhibit ends with two iconic dresses – the sexy halter back Marilyn Monroe wore in Seven Year Itch and the innocent blue gingham Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz. Both are behind glass, unlike the rest of the exhibit. You walk out to a “The End” montage and find yourself back in the real world – or, at least, a museum corridor.

We perused the gift shop and wandered through a few galleries. Then we decided there’s no place like home, so we headed that way.

If you get a chance to see the Hollywood Costume exhibit, do it!

Here’s what you need to know.

Hollywood Costume at Phoenix Art Museum

• This Sunday (July 6) is the last day the exhibition will be in Phoenix.
• You need both Museum admission + a Hollywood Costume ticket to see it.
• Tomorrow (July 4) is First Friday, so Museum admission is free and Hollywood Costume admission is discounted. It’s also Independence Day, but it would be a nice, air-conditioned thing to do before it’s dark enough for fireworks.
• No photos are allowed in the exhibit.
• The exhibition is touring from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I don’t know where it goes next. [Update below.]
• Visit phxart.org for exhibition details, including a list of all the costumes on display (PDF).
• Have fun!

UPDATE: The next and final stop for Hollywood Costume will be the historic Wilshire May Company building in Los Angeles from October 2, 2014 through March 2, 2015. It will be presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.