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At the Emmys was Issa Rae. At the VMAs, Megan Fox. Kendall Jenner and Zo Kravitz attended the Met Gala. Is this how the world appears after Victoria's Secret?
Megan Fox decided to become an icon instead of continuing to be a glaringly underappreciated actress somewhere between her thigh and her ribcage.
She wore a series of barely-there outfits by Mugler (at the VMAs), Peter Dundas and Revolve (at the Met Gala), and David Koma as she conquered New York City with the aid of stylist Maeve Reilly (on the streets of Manhattan). Fox, however, has continued to wear her bra and underwear as a visible part of her outfits, unlike previous celebrities who have embraced the "naked dress"—Kate Moss in Dior around 1993, Rose McGowan in Maja Hanson in 1998, and Rihanna in a Swarovski net at the 2014 CFDA Awards.
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| Issa Rae wears a naked dress by Aliette to the 2021 Emmys. |
Last night at the Emmy Awards, Issa Rae also had a moment in her underwear by showing up in a mesh dress with black briefs underneath. In a sheer white Alaa dress with appliqué on the bust and a white brief-like detail around her hips, Hailey Bieber made an appearance at the VMAs the week before. And the following day at the Met Gala, Kendall Jenner and Zoe Kravitz both donned naked dresses and undies while being covered in sparkling crystals.
Even though these red-carpet outfits leave little to the imagination, they are more indicative of current fashion. In the post-Secret Victoria's era, lingerie is being embraced by designers as a means of expression. There seems to be a message here about female identity—and our current struggle between full transparency and filtered fame—rather than just titillation.
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| Hailey Bieber’s Alaïa dress is a sophisticated take on the trend. |
“What’s interesting about this trend is that it isn’t just fodder for the male gaze,” Cora Harrington, an underwear expert and the author who opines on underpinnings at The Lingerie Addict, notes. “The Met Gala is not being pitched to straight college guys who just want to look at girls! Mugler and Givenchy are not being pitched that way. What you’re seeing now is an individual female choice.”
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| Zoë Kravitz poses in Saint Laurent. |
Believe it or not, this choice may be backed up by science. One Danish study determined that women wear lingerie for “heightened feelings of control” in everyday life. Behavioral scientist Carolyn Mair confirms that “wearing nice quality underwear or lingerie sets boost our confidence and self-esteem … [and] feeling confident can make us appear more physically attractive because we tend to stand, walk, speak, and gesticulate differently.” (Of course, you’ll also move differently if you’re strapped into a custom-fit bustier to begin with.
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| Lili Reinhart poses in Christian Siriano. |
The trend recasts lingerie as what the French philosopher Michel Foucault would call a “technology of the self”—outer objects we use to construct our inner world. For Fox, visible underwear is a way of saying that she knows she’s going to be sexualized anyway, so she might as well own it. “A woman who is intelligent and also knows how to weaponize her beauty … there’s nothing more dangerous than that. There’s nothing more powerful than that,” she told livestream cohost Keke Palmer on the Met Gala red carpet.
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| Kendall Jenner wears Givenchy at the Met Gala. |
Of course, even though this take on underwear leans more into fa-shun than simply looking sexy, it still rewards the same patriarchal beauty standards that fashion claims it’s trying to unlace. “Women who are curvier often get called ‘tacky’ or ‘trashy’ for centering lingerie or underwear in their outfits,” Harrington says, “because the expectations that society puts on larger and curvier women’s bodies are unfortunately stricter. It shouldn’t be like that, but as soon as you’re showing fat rolls or your body isn’t an hourglass shape, it becomes somehow distasteful to certain people on the Internet.”
On a practical level, the trend fits nicely into this moment of transition from work-from-home loungewear into a more public life. (Look at Vera Wang’s silk boxer shorts, Kate Hudson’s baby-pink Michael Kors bralette, or Alicia Keys’s red lace bra, which peeked out from one of Alber Elbaz’s vintage white shirts.) We could even turn visible undies into a metaphor for fame and social media, where “full transparency” is the goal—as long as it’s cinched and embroidered with invisible expertise. In which case, the interplay between Kim Kardashian’s and Kendall Jenner’s now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t outfits wasn’t just a great meme; it was a savvy commentary on their public and private selves.
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| CL wears Alexander Wang. |
And the statistics support it as well. Sales of underwear are soaring, and designers are here to take advantage of that market. Because of this, it was evident that the look was here to stay when everyone from K-pop star CL to runway queen Precious Lee displayed peekaboo moments in their paparazzi photos this month.
