State dinners used to be safe. You could expect to go to one and not have the sentence I wonder if she’s wearing underpants pop into your head. At weddings, you wouldn’t have to worry about inadvertently glancing at the bride’s bum or clocking a nipple.
But now there you stand amid the merriment, champagne flute in hand, wearing an opaque dress with your body parts covered, and it’s as if you’d just finished churning butter at Old Sturbridge Village. So démodée.
Such is the ubiquity of the naked dress. Who can look away? And maybe that’s why this particular fashion folly refuses to abate. Each movie premiere, awards show, and gala outdoes the last, as if every event is strip poker played with transparent bolts of tulle.
“This is all an attention game,” says Kate Young, a stylist who works with Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore, and Dakota Johnson, among others. “You want as much press for your movie as you can get. And this is how you get it.”
In this competitive arena, prizes are measured in eyeballs—big, popping eyeballs. Let’s consider Exhibit A, Dakota Johnson, who wore a series of dresses that resembled spiderwebs to promote Madame Web. The movie bombed, but Johnson sure didn’t as she appeared on various talk shows and Saturday Night Live teasers. Young kept it all tasteful, or as tasteful as these things go. “The dresses weren’t colorful or spangly,” Young says. “There’s a minimalism. And that was intentional. She looked smart and also is superhot. That’s kind of the vibe.”
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. Only when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge did they discover the concept of modesty. Maybe some of these performers today are trying to take us back to that simpler time by revealing their bodies without a shred of self-consciousness.
Each movie premiere, awards show, and gala outdoes the last, as if every event is strip poker played with transparent bolts of tulle.
Young points to the recent Academy Awards, where the dresses were “basically painted on, like a swimsuit. Now the celebrity is thinking, I’m basically naked anyway, so you might as well make me naked.”
Look around! There’s Rihanna in fishnet, crystals, and a thong; there’s Kristen Stewart, pantless; there’s Katy Perry and her butt crack (and, yes, typing those words pains me), there’s Emily Ratajkowski being Emily Ratajkowski. Let’s not forget the fellas who’ve decided to forgo shirts. Hi, Harry Styles, Paul Mescal, Lil Nas X, Barry Keoghan, Timothée Chalamet. Nice pecs!
There’s clearly an inverse relationship between the rise of Ozempic and the disappearance of clothing. “People’s bodies cost money to look so perfect that you can walk about naked,” says Young. “There’s surgery, there’s Ozempic, there are makeup artists.” The stylists are mostly responsible for keeping it all somewhat aboveboard.
This exposure is also a sign of privilege and, according to Young, a flex. “You have security, you’re rich, your car is armored. You have no clothes on and they’ll let you in the party. It’s a signifier.”
Expect to see more of the same on Monday. Those who are planning to show up at the Met Gala in a few carefully arranged sequins may want to know that someone got there first—in 1974. “Cher and I went together to the Met Ball way, way back when Diana Vreeland was doing it,” says Bob Mackie. “She walked in, in her see-through dress, and the whole place just stopped cold. Everybody was staring at her. When she wore the same dress on the cover of Time, some newsstands banned the magazine. I thought it was kind of funny, because you couldn’t see anything, really.” Mackie describes many of these dresses as “just nude enough but not really—that’s the secret right there.”
By the way, Mackie, whose documentary, Naked Illusion, is premiering in Los Angeles later this month, did the original sketch of the “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress for Marilyn Monroe when he was assisting Jean Louis, the designer. “It’s a very simple dress, except it is made out of one layer of the sheerest nude fabric, and all the diamonds and the beads are all in the right places. So you think you’re seeing everything, but you don’t see anything.”
That’s a crucial distinction. “You have to be very careful when you do those kinds of clothes,” Mackie says. “If it gets too naked then it’s just cheesy.”
There may be nowhere to go from here but naked and cheesy. And now we have no choice but to discuss Bianca Censori, Kayne West’s wife and current project, who seems to believe that stockings, bandages, and a transparent, nylon crop top are clothing. One thing’s certain: “She’s living up to her name,” says Jacque Lynn Foltyn, a professor of sociology at National University in San Diego. “Censori, censored—how can you make that name up?” Maybe “un-Censori” is more accurate.
She’s doing her part to keep the nylon industry thriving, and the staff at the Daily Mail busy as they document her trips from car to restaurant and back again. “The more unclothed she is, the more clothed he is,” says Foltyn. “It’s really striking.”
Foltyn elevates the conversation—no small feat—by drawing on history. “There’s a distinction between the naked and the nude,” she says. “A basic tenet of art history is that the nude is the body reformed…. There’s some level of artifice, making it an aesthetic object. But naked is the defenseless body in a natural state.” In other words, Censori, with her carefully placed handbags and throw pillows, is nude, not naked. At least as of this writing. “She’s like this statue,” says Foltyn, though perhaps it belongs at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! rather than the Louvre.
We know what Censori is wearing under those clothes (nothing), but how does a stylist make sure there are no unintended nip slips for the rest of the population? Ordinary underpinnings won’t do. They’re too thin and they move around too much, says Young. For Dakota Johnson’s Gucci web dress, Gucci made a bodysuit in a shade that matched her skin. The people at Saturday Night Live are apparently not fond of nipples, so, according to Young, they thoughtfully provided pasties.
If it all makes you yearn for a cloak or a nun’s habit, I’m with you. For each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And for that we can look to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who, after a childhood of overexposure, dress in neck-to-ankle layers, as if to obscure even a sliver of flesh. I just bought a sweater from their line, the Row. I plan to wear it to the beach.
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look
