Marilyn Monroe’s billowing skirt shows it is possible to catch a nice breeze in the Windy City.

As dozens of people watched, an eight-metre-tall sculpture of Monroe in her famous pose from the film The Seven Year Itch was unveiled on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

In the film, a draft catches Monroe’s dress as she passes over a grate.

Many in the crowd that descended on the plaza throughout the day – including a tuxedo-clad wedding party – wastedlittle time positioning themselves under the film star’s dress to catch a subway-level view and take pictures with their mobile phone cameras.

Not that Monroe, her eyes closed and a sublime smile on her face, seemed to notice.

Some of those who took pictures of the sculpture called Forever Marilyn were surprised when they came around the side and back of the sculpture and saw honest-to-goodness lace panties on the film star.

The film scene and photographs taken from it left much more to the imagination than artist Seward Johnson’s sculpture.

“I would have expected to see something flat there, and we wouldn’t see her undergarments,” said Trisha Feely, 41, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. “It’s a little intrusive.”

“It reveals what everybody was always thinking,” said her husband, Terry Feely, 42.”