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The woman who lives in Marilyn Monroe’s house in 2020 has perfectly coiffed platinum blonde hair, a penchant for red lipstick, and a wardrobe of exclusively 1950s dresses. But she’s not Marilyn Monroe; she’s Jasmine Chiswell, a content creator with 3.4 million followers on TikTok who tune into videos about fashion history and tales from the house (which she says is haunted by the presence of Monroe). It’s a ’50s aesthetic in a language that’s entirely 2020. Ever seen a Hitchcock blonde do a TikTok dance? Now you have. That dissonance makes her page dizzying to look at and hard to turn away from.
Chiswell’s most popular videos are fashion-centric, with many of them in familiar formats for influencers. She has done tours of her beauty room and her closet, and does TikTok fashion trends only with vintage clothes. She’ll also post clothing hacks and tips for making your legs look longer in photos, perfectly composed selfies that are filtered in a dreamy, midcentury glow. If that wasn’t enough to hold your attention, then there’s the Marilyn house which she and her husband discovered after passing another one of Monroe’s former homes which was being demolished. They then researched the actor’s other properties, saw one was for sale, and bought it with the intention to preserve it. A video she posted to TikTok titled “Random Things I’ve Found Living in Marilyn Monroe’s House” has almost 15 million views. She’s found magazines from 1953 (when Monroe and Joe DiMaggio would have lived there) and the actor’s signature hidden on a rafter. The level of commitment is so high and specific, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think: Is this just an elaborate bit?
When I first meet Chiswell, she’s sitting on a balcony, directly beneath the apex of a wide archway. The wind is blowing, her hair is almost white, and she’s wearing a formfitting, white, sleeveless wiggle dress and Bobbi Brown’s Parisian Red lipstick (“I also put Charlotte Tilbury’s [So] Marilyn just at the sides,” she says). Her hair is coiffed into a halo and softly curled. Since the wind is blowing, it adds to the cinematic effect but creates some angry background noise on Zoom. Just behind her, I can see a gray millennial-does-midcentury-modern couch. Chiswell speaks with a gentle, high-pitched Scottish accent and has impeccable posture. She’s been dressing in vintage and reproduction vintage clothing (clothes made recently from vintage patterns) for almost three years. Her husband, Maverick McNeilly, does too. He’s a music producer, and she’s a full-time content creator, with an Instagram and YouTube channel in addition to TikTok. They live in the Spanish-style house in Burbank, California, where Monroe lived with DiMaggio, which Chiswell thinks was built around 1939 and is haunted by a mostly friendly ghost, possibly Monroe’s. “Since being in this house, my hair has gotten a lot better. I know that’s really bizarre,” Chiswell says.
Chiswell didn’t always dress this way. She grew up between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and loved to watch old movies with her grandmother. She loved how Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Grace Kelly, and Diana Dors dressed, particularly in their casualwear. “I didn’t have the confidence to dress that way though,” she says. “I had kind of a grungy style. I got rid of my Doc Martens when I started dressing this way, but I’ve always loved heels.” Jeans were a particular insecurity; they never fit her well in the thighs or waist. When she was in Burbank, she came across Bésame, a vintage makeup store where she bought lipstick and face powder. Then it clicked. She started collecting vintage dresses and reproductions of vintage dresses (they live in separate closets, as the vintage dresses are a bit more delicate). McNeilly started dressing in vintage clothes about six months after she did. He dresses like a greaser, in camp shirts and high-waisted pants that wouldn’t draw too much attention from dudes in Brooklyn. “I like 1958–1962 fashion the most,” he says.
Both Chiswell and McNeilly speak of not shopping, but collecting. To be a vintage shopper, you have to have a magpie mindset. The two scour Etsy, Ebay, estate sales, auction houses, thrift stores, and vintage stores together. “I have close to maybe 100 true vintage pieces of clothing, and 50 reproductions,” Chiswell says. “That’s false. You have at least 220 vintage and so many regular reproduction dresses,” McNeilly says, and Chiswell laughs. Men’s clothes are harder to find (“A lot of men wore their clothes until they basically broke,” Chiswell says). Chiswell collects wiggle dresses. Her favorite is from Ceil Chapman, a ’50s designer who made dresses for Monroe. She collects belts, particularly ones made from pure copper, and has several she purchased at auction that belonged to Loretta Young, an actress in the ’40s and ’50s. They’re wrapped up delicately, and from what I can tell, are rarely, if ever, worn. “We were scared to unwrap it,” Chiswell says, unwrapping a cream-color belt with reverence. “When they were packaged [at the auction house], someone broke one of the buckles.” On her TikTok, she chronicles the intricacies of fashion treasures she’s found, from a 1880s coin purse to a never-opened set of false lashes from the 1950s.
The couple is just as fastidious when it comes to their retro beauty and grooming regimes. McNeilly does his hair in true Danny Zuko style, with real grease. “I use dish soap to wash the grease out of my hair,” he says. “It’s probably the worst thing you can do to your hair. It sits so much better, though.” Chiswell sets her hair in pin curls every night. “I looked up a lot of Youtube tutorials, and I found these old 1950s hair books that had different setting patterns,” she says. It’s cut specifically in a horseshoe shape, by a hairstylist who worked with her to find the perfect vintage hairdo. She usually gets her hair touched up every two weeks, but has been doing an at-home dyeing process since the pandemic began. “The first time was awful, as expected, but I think I’m starting to get used to it now,” she says.
Because of her unmistakable look and the millions who follow her on social media, Chiswell can never truly be incognito, even under lockdown. She’s had people come up to her in the street, to mock her, compliment her, or sometimes to offer her their own vintage clothing. Says Chiswell: “Because my husband dresses this way too, people will watch us and follow us around corners just to stare and look at us. We’ve had some people come up and laugh in our faces. I remember it was my birthday last year. And it kind of took me back a little bit. But I thought about it like, It’s okay I don’t let things like that get to me. At the end of the day, I feel like this style makes me happy and makes me who I am. Most of the response is really positive and people will come up to me. Older people will come up and say, ‘Oh, I used to do my hair like that.’”