Celebrities from Dakota Johnson to Margot Robbie are embracing the naked dress, a trend that reflects both fashion’s love of spectacle and society’s obsession with transparency.
Dakota Johnson arrived at the Kering Foundation’s Caring for Women Dinner in New York this September wearing a sheer black lace Gucci gown with delicate floral embroidery and dark sequins, revealing a balconette bra and underwear beneath. It was, as Harper’s Bazaar described it, “turning heads in a stunning, gothic-inspired naked dress.” Only days later, Margot Robbie walked the London red carpet for the premiere of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey in a gown from Giorgio Armani Privé’s Spring 2025 collection. Its paisley and floral beadwork rippled across a sheer base, skimming her body with the suggestion of nudity while glittering embellishments played at modesty.
The naked dress is not new. Cher wore Bob Mackie’s sheer beadwork to the Met Gala in 1974; Kate Moss was immortalized in her silver slip at a London party in 1993; Rihanna’s Swarovski-crystal Adam Selman dress at the 2014 CFDA Awards set a new bar for audacity. But in 2025, naked dressing is a prevailing aesthetic. The MTV Video Music Awards red carpet last weekend was awash in sheer fabrics and visible lingerie: Sabrina Carpenter in strategically cut mesh, Tate McRae in gauzy white panels, Alix Earle and Nikki Glaser in gowns that blurred the line between undergarments and eveningwear. Jessica Simpson made her return to the VMA stage in a body-skimming Christian Siriano creation, translucent and unapologetic.
Johnson wore a sheer long-sleeve Nensi Dojaka midi dress and bodysuit while promoting Materialists on Late Night With Seth Meyers earlier this summer, too.
Beyond the spectacle, the naked dress has become quantifiable. Google searches for “sheer dress” climbed steadily from late 2024 into early 2025, peaking in February, though “mesh dress” consistently drew higher interest over the same period. Seasonal spikes show “sheer summer dress” trending each spring, while “sheer cocktail dress” dominates searches in November and March, underscoring its status as a perennial holiday favorite.
Yet while interest is rising, resistance persists. Cannes Film Festival issued a dress code update in 2025 that banned sheer gowns outright, citing both “decency” and logistics. The rule arrived just twenty-four hours before the festival began, catching stylists off guard and igniting debate about whether fashion’s appetite for nakedness had collided with institutional limits.
The naked dressing is often seen as a statement of confidence and empowerment, a way for wearers to assert control over their image. It challenges traditional notions of modesty and body image, allowing individuals to reclaim their bodies and express their style and sovereignty.
Transparency as the cultural metaphor
Why go naked now? The timing of the naked dress feels inseparable from the way we live online. Our feeds are already a performance of exposure, with private lives offered up for public consumption. Bodies, relationships, breakdowns, recoveries — every intimate detail is already part of the digital ecosystem. To step onto a red carpet in a transparent gown is, paradoxically, to regain authorship of exposure. What is seen is no accident, no hack, no leak; it is chosen.
This mirrors broader cultural cravings for transparency, not just in fashion but in politics, business, and social life. Consumers want corporations to disclose supply chains, voters want politicians to release records, and friends expect honesty in digital conversations. The naked dress becomes an avatar of this climate: literal transparency as shorthand for authenticity, whether or not it is genuine.
It also speaks to the collapse of modesty as a default virtue. What once defined respectability — the covered body — is now reinterpreted. Modesty, in its modern usage, is about intention rather than fabric. To bare skin in 2025 can be an act of self-protection as much as an act of seduction: a refusal to hide, a declaration of agency.
Fashion’s constant cycle of shock and absorption
Of course, naked dressing thrives on shock, but it also risks fatigue. When everyone is revealing, who is truly daring? Rihanna’s Swarovski gown in 2014 stunned because it was singular; today’s sheer looks pile atop one another in a crowded feed — just look at the VMAs red carpet where every other guest seemed to arrive more naked than the next. Stylists note the diminishing returns of provocation, the need to innovate within exposure. This may explain the intricate embellishments, the play of nude tones, the engineering of illusion panels that both expose and disguise.
Designers are treating transparency as a technical challenge. Fabrics must hold structure while appearing weightless. Embroidery must obscure just enough without losing its delicacy. Mesh must stretch but not warp under lights. These garments are feats of engineering, couture in their precision, even if they read as effortless.
And the trend’s ubiquity is reinforced by the mechanics of digital attention. Sheer gowns photograph well, their interplay of fabric and flesh made for the scroll. They invite commentary, memes, reposts. The outfits are less garments than algorithms, engineered to circulate.
Not all naked dresses are received equally. Critics point out that race, body type, and celebrity status determine whether exposure is praised as bold or condemned as indecent. A white, slim actress in sheer couture is hailed as chic; a woman of color or a plus-size star in a similar look may encounter harsher judgment. The naked dress, then, also exposes cultural biases, the uneven distribution of who is allowed to bare skin without penalty.
This inequity surfaced in the reactions at the VMAs. While Carpenter and McRae’s looks were lauded as daring, some online commentary turned more critical when lesser-known or differently-bodied figures wore similarly revealing outfits. Visibility is not neutral; it is mediated by hierarchies of desirability and power.
The future of nakedness
The naked dress has also seeped into everyday style, albeit in softened forms. Sheer blouses over visible bras, mesh skirts over boyshorts, transparent layering pieces — these are trickling into retail. Fast-fashion chains have reproduced runway sheerness in polyester and nylon, democratizing exposure for a mass audience. But this democratization comes with environmental costs, raising questions about whether naked dressing can be reconciled with fashion’s sustainability crisis.
Some designers are responding by working with sustainable sheers: recycled mesh, organic silks, lace crafted through less resource-intensive methods. The contradiction remains: transparency as metaphor is appealing, but the literal transparency of fast-fashion fabrics may obscure the exploitative systems behind them.
Where does the trend go from here? Perhaps toward hybridization: sheer overlays layered atop sculptural corsets, detachable skirts that allow toggling between opaque and transparent, undergarments designed as central statements rather than hidden necessities. Johnson and Robbie’s recent outings suggest that the future of naked dressing is not simply about showing skin, but about playing with thresholds.
Institutional pushback, like Cannes’ ban, will likely escalate. Red carpets may regulate coverage, forcing designers to innovate within tighter parameters. But fashion thrives on rules to break; the more institutions resist, the more stars may seek out spaces to defy.
For now, the naked dress remains both a garment and a gesture — possibly even a declaration that transparency is always in style.
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