The 2026 awards season has been the season of the nude dress.
Jennifer Lawrence wore a white floral Givenchy to the Golden Globes. Jenna Ortega showed everything on the sides in Dilara Findikoglu cutouts. Nicole Kidman wore Schiaparelli as a bra. Sydney Sweeney has been on crystal-encrusted mats at nearly every event she’s shown at, often brazen, with her nipples visible through the fabric.
Chappell Roan and Heidi Klum took it too far at the Grammys, with dresses that looked completely nude but actually covered everything. Roan’s dress was a recreation of the Thierry Mugler 1998 Spring/Summer Couture show. Her makeup team, led by Sasha Glasser, attached the dress to a silicone artificial nipple piercing attached to her chest with medical Telesis. Silver rings attached to the prosthetics carried the actual weight of the dress. The prosthetics did not have real nipples, making the photos clear of Instagram and Facebook’s nudity filters.
Klum’s dress was a tight leather frame created from a 3D scan of her own body, topped with a shimmery skin tone. He said it was so hard that he couldn’t even walk on it. It was designed by Marina Hoermanseder, an Austrian-German designer known for sculptural, fetish-inspired silhouettes.
The trend has spread beyond the red carpet. Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Kylie Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, and Bianca Censori have all been photographed in sheer mesh and a few slippers on casual days. A handful of girlie labels power it: Are You Am I out of Los Angeles, Mirror Palais in New York, Nancy Dojaka in London, Rat & Boa, and a wave of accessible Revolve labels (Lovers and Friends, Jaded London, AFRM). Instagram users who mimic the look buy from similar brands.
The exposed thong has become its signature style within the trend. Hailey Bieber wore a classic Gucci nude dress over a see-through thong at the 2025 GQ Men of the Year party. Teyana Taylor wore a Tom Ford “thong dress” at the Time100 Next event. Chappell Roan turned up on the Paris Fashion Week carpet wearing a Vivienne Westwood coat and backless skirt, bold tights, and a black thong underneath, all visible. Dakota Johnson made two appearances in September 2025: a black floral Gucci dress with a visible Fleur du Mal balconette bra and a matching thong at the Kering Caring for Women dinner during NYFW, then a bright blue Gucci dress without a bodice at the Zurich Film Festival two weeks later. Underwear is part of the property.
The naked dress is older than people think. Mae West wore a lace frock in her 1936 film Go West, A Little Guy that is almost identical to the classic Jean-Louis Scherrer dress worn by Jennifer Lopez at the Golden Globes this year. Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to JFK in 1962 in a Jean Louis creation with a nude, curvaceous tone. Cher and Bob Mackie spent the 1970s creating costumes for the show. Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace at the 2000 Grammys was searched so often that it inspired the creation of Google Image Search. The term “naked dress” itself was coined by Sex and the City in 1998.
April Clemmer, a Los Angeles-based stylist and fashion historian, traces the look back further. French Merveilleuses of the 1790s wore muslin chemicals and sometimes wetted the cloth to make it shine. Some died of pneumonia from exposure. In the 17th century, aristocratic women would display their nipples in low-slung bodices. The free movement of the nipples of the 2010s, with Florence Pugh in pink Valentino tulle, Rihanna in crystal mesh, and Doja Cat in a cobweb corset, made the bold modern look normal. Roan and Klum did the opposite: great art, full coverage, dressed like vanity.
The reason why it is everywhere is now much clearer than people think. Robert Ossant, a fashion historian, told Newsweek that the nude dress of the 1990s (Julien Macdonald, Tom Ford at Gucci, Versace) was there for magazine editors who wanted pictures of almost naked women on the covers. The 2026 version exists for the scroll, and for a different reason.
In an age where anyone with a phone can deepfake or Photoshop a celebrity’s body, dressing as an intentional, authorized, intended version of yourself is the only way to control how your body is perceived before someone else fakes it. The 2026 wave of “bare” AI tools, including the deeply controversial Grok AI, has brought forward urgency. Roan, Klum, Lawrence, Ortega, Kidman, Sweeney, and Johnson all do the same thing. To release their own controlled, exaggerated, fully fleshed out version of the naked body first, on their terms. Modeling Instagram users are doing the same thing on a smaller scale, with skimpy clothes and strategic mesh.
Ossant put it this way: “I think part of it has to do with women taking the narrative back to their bodies. With AI and Photoshop allowing anyone to do anything, going nude takes the air out of the canvas and allows them to control how people perceive their bodies.”
In 2026, the naked look is the most popular.
Photo Credits: Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, “Madame Web” world premiere, Westwood, Los Angeles. Image: Backgrid. Hailey Bieber, 2025 GQ Men of the Year party, Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles. Image: Backgrid.