If we sound inconvenienced today, it’s because some of the sheer naked dresses on the runway are actually quite striking. But the trouble is, fast fashion brands don’t make them for women who wear larger sizes.
Recently in Beijing, Dior did what Dior loves to do: an overlay of iridescent chiffon over bloomers and a bra top that’s really just a bra. Who wouldn’t want that? Some people, but it just looks so soft, so so pretty and so feminine. Celine, Balenciaga, and Alexander Wang have all showed slinky slip dresses with liberal views of skin, and Harper’s Bazaar has reported that lingerie and netting for dresses are on-trend for this spring because obviously.
Since 2013, the sheer naked dress has become a red carpet staple for better or for worse. It’s the dress to be ogled at in, reported on, and also to celebrate your bod in. So many famouses like Jennifer Lopez, Rita Ora, and Kim Kardashian go the NAKED but with some lace route now, and it makes sense. It’s 1. feminist and slightly pervy at the same time (read our interview with the Free the Nipple director on that) and 2. Everyone’s all on Instagram being totes transparent and documenting “intimate moments.” These dresses are also – the best among them – couture-looking.
There isn’t a real report on the number of non-famous people who actually shell out for all these see-through frocks. It’s not difficult to imagine that these dresses might not rake in buckets of cash money. But it’s such a trend-driven look, and aside from the odd paper-thin Missguided or Boohoo offering, we don’t see brands for women who wear larger sizes remixing it on the cheap. We could certainly find some see-through mesh bodycon hideousness from a fetish gear company, but we’d rather look at Justin Bieber’s cornrows than that.
The weaved lattice on a half-naked bod is very alluring when Celine, Rochas, and even Marchesa do it. The thing about naked dresses is one designer can create a real aesthetic achievement. The more you look at it, the more you notice more beautiful things. Other designers serve up what looks like trashy clubwear. The best ones are molded to every inch of a smaller shape, but what about the rest of the world that has body pride?
It’s officially time for the Asos Curve’s and Eloquii’s of the world to give us more beautiful nekkedness dresses at larger sizes. If they did, we’d love it if they did it with expensive-looking fabrics with a soft hand, and also in a way that wasn’t in your face MOLTO SEXY. It may not be too easy, but more brands should endeavor to make affordable partially see-through dresses for everybody. If a delicate size 18 “naked” dress had to be looser or it had to have thick, strategically placed bands of fabric to show less, then fine…even though it shouldn’t have to.
The naked dress — with healthy doses of legs, side boob, tum, and all the other erogenous zones — is favored among fashionable people and fame whores. Sometimes it makes you look like you wrapped yourself up in a fisherman’s net and you’re pissing tassles. Other times women look like they’re gearing up to own the icecapades. FKA twigs wore one to the VMA’s that was straight up fetishwear. (Please let the latex addiction RIP.) We’re not talking about the HERE NAKED Adam Selman dress that allowed Rihanna to accept a CFDA award for wearing clothing while being basically naked except for a strategic fur stole. A netted mess on Lady Gaga or Beyonce’s costumey Met Gala “gown” might best be left to famous people with a coterie of bodyguards. But give us Jourdan Dunn and Cara Delevingne in Burberry—these are the kind of naked dresses we want in our lives.
We get that looking for LOGIC and access in the world of luxury is still a lost cause at the moment. But other brands should roll the dice on this one. Because the idea that women are counting the days until they size down before they show cellulite in something sheer is false.
