Today marks what would be Marilyn Monroe‘s 99th birthday, and, even a century after her birth, her stamp on pop culture remains. The word icon is often thrown around, but there are few figures who embody it as fully as the blonde bombshell. Throughout her lifetime — and after her untimely death at the age of 36 in 1962 from a Barbiturate overdose— Monroe’s influence touched every facet of culture from film to TV, music, fashion, beauty, art, and perhaps less widely talked about: shoes.

Monroe’s legacy on the footwear industry lingers to this day with her likeness not only plastered across shoes and her name synonymous with a heel style, but also her relationship with shoes as both an everlasting museum exhibit subject and an inspiration for the runway.

To back up, it all began with Salvatore Ferragamo, who popularized the stiletto heel. While Monroe has been credited as one of the earliest pop culture cannon wearers of clear heels — lucite platforms with pink straps in the 1953 film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” — and Keds in 1952’s “Clash by Night,” her signature shoe was the Ferragamo pump.

Monroe achieved her unmistakable pinup silhouette in part with Ferragamo’s 4-inch high-heel pumps, specifically the Filetia and Viatica — seen in her 1959 classic “Some Like It Hot.” “I don’t know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot,” Monroe famously said.

While Monroe reportedly never met Ferragamo, she was a regular at his Park Avenue store in New York City, where — after moving from Hollywood in 1954 — she would frequently scoop up her favored style in a variety of colors.

In a full circle moment, some of the Ferragamo shoes she collected over the year became available for auction at an estate sale at Christie’s New York in 1999, dubbed “The Personal Property of Marilyn Monroe” — and Salvatore Ferragamo’s son Massimo and wife Wanda set out to be among the first bidders, as WWD reported at the time.

While Massimo also never met Monroe, he was “well aware of her place in the family history” and attended the estate sale with the intention to purchase all 60 pairs of shoes being auctioned — 20 of which were Ferragamo stiletto heels — in hopes of placing them in the Ferragamo museum in Florence.

The crown jewel of the collection were a pair of ruby slipper-like red satin and rhinestone encrusted pumps in Monroe’s trademark style from the opener of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” While Christie’s estimated that the red shoes would go for $4,000 to $6,000, they were actually purchased for $48,300 at the 1999 auction — and safely ended up in the hands of the Ferragamo archive.

The return of the bedazzled red pump to Ferragamo inspired a limited-edition reissue of it that same year. 500 pairs of reproductions of the shoes Ferragamo designed for Monroe were made — along with 100 matching handbags. For those in search of the rare reissue of Monroe’s shoes, there are still pairs floating around to this day — currently one is up for purchase for $1,895 at 1st Dibs.

The shoes Massimo collected did make their way to the Ferragamo museum and, in 2012, Monroe’s love of Ferragamo shoes was immortalized in a retrospective exhibit to mark the 50th anniversary of her death. The showcase included 30 pairs of shoes and over 50 ensembles from Monroe’s wardrobe, from both the characters she played on screen to the clothes she wore while off-duty.

Monroe’s enduring appeal — and storied history with Ferragamo shoes — has been a source of inspiration in fashion. For spring 2023, it was the basis of the Italian fashion house creative director Maximilian Davis’ debut collection.

“I wanted to pay tribute to Salvatore’s start by bringing in the culture of Hollywood,” Davis told WWD at the time, adding, “But new Hollywood. Its ease and sensuality, its sunset and sunrise.”