Kim Kardashian stunned many onlookers at the Met Gala on Monday by wearing the iconic “Happy Birthday” dress that Marilyn Monroe wore in 1962, before slipping into a replica specifically made for the rest of the event.

Kardashian wore the dress on the iconic steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a culmination of weeks of planning and training in an attempt to fit better into the Marilyn Monroe dress which she originally was not able to fully put on, according to People.

“I always thought she was extremely curvy. I imagined I might be smaller in some places where she was bigger and bigger in places where she was smaller. So when it didn't fit me I wanted to cry because it can't be altered at all,” she said.

She said that she went on a crash diet for two weeks to lose over 16 pounds for the dress as Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, the museum that bought the dress for a record-breaking $4.8 million in 2016, refused to alter the original dress in any way to fit Kardashian, CNN reported.

“I would wear a sauna suit twice a day, run on the treadmill, completely cut out all sugar and all carbs, and just eat the cleanest veggies and protein,” she said. “I didn't starve myself, but I was so strict.”

After a few weeks, she was finally able to fully fit into the dress, with boyfriend Pete Davidson encouraging her and comforting her as she entered the dress. They weren’t able to zip the dress all the way up from her butt, so they were forced to use a white fur coat to cover up the area of that dress, according to Page Six.

Kardashian only wore the dress for the Met Gala steps, going into a specialized changing room to slip into the dress for the pictures before entering the changing room again and slipping into a replica of the dress provided by Ripley’s Believe It or Not!.

“I'm extremely respectful to the dress and what it means to American history. I would never want to sit in it or eat in it or have any risk of any damage to it and I won't be wearing the kind of body makeup I usually do,” she said. “Everything had to be specifically timed and I had to practice walking up the stairs.”

She spoke about the meaning of the dress for her, about how being able to wear one of the first sheer dresses in history means to her personally: “Nowadays everyone wears sheer dresses, but back then that was not the case. In a sense, it's the original naked dress. That's why it was so shocking.”

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Kim Kardashian graced the Met Gala steps on Monday wearing the iconic dress that Marilyn Monroe wore for the birthday event of President John F. Kennedy in 1962. Noam Galai/Getty Images.

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