Why hypersexual fashion is dominating runways, red carpets, and pop culture.&nbsp;

Over the last few seasons, naked dressing—wearing skimpy, barely-there outfits, often in sheer fabrics or strategically designed to highlight undergarments—has quietly transformed from occasional scandal to trusted fashion formula. Nowhere was that more evident than at this year’s Met Gala, where the theme encouraged attendees to approach their bodies as artwork—and guests happily complied. Model Gigi Hadid donned a sheer custom Miu Miu gown that showed off matching briefs; French influencer Léna Mahfouf wore a Burc Akyol dress featuring two sculpted hands covering her breasts; Beyoncé opted for a skin-colored mesh Olivier Rousteing piece with a diamond bodice that flared out&nbsp;in the subtle shape of a skeleton.
Just a few months before at the Grammys, sexy looks also dominated the red carpet: Heidi Klum wore a nude latex dress to the event, Karol G chose a barely-there lace number, and Chappell Roan’s Mugler nipple-ring dress practically broke the internet.&nbsp;

Léna Mahfouf at the 2026 Met Gala.

Chappell Roan at the 2026 Grammy Awards.

“I think [hypersexual fashion] has become more and more normalized again in the last maybe 10 years, and increasingly there are also some leading designers who are promoting that and having success with it,” says Valerie Steele, a fashion historian and the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Steele points to the Schiaparelli designer Daniel Roseberry, whose corsets are a customer favorite.
“It’s as though on these [red carpet] occasions women feel either a combination of pressure to show off their bodies, but also desire to do so, because this is one of the relatively few occasions that you&nbsp;can show off so much of your body,” she adds. “It’s a safe space. If you’re out on the street dressed in&nbsp;a very sexy way, someone might assault you or insult you.&nbsp;But this is an area where extreme physical display and sexual&nbsp;display are normalized.”
But naked dressing doesn’t always—or just—mean sheer outfits. For some, seductive styling is a way to reclaim power through sexuality, exaggerate or play with gender identities, or translate fetish references like latex, corsetry, and body harnesses into fashion fodder. Margot Robbie chose a corset gown by the Turkish designer Dilara Findikoglu for the London premiere of Wuthering Heights, while Anne Hathaway wore a “choker-esque frayed gown” to the London premiere of Mother Mary. Some red carpet looks have gotten so outrageous that the Cannes Film Festival banned naked dressing altogether.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that provocative, risqué silhouettes have taken over the red carpet, since they’re also all over the runways. Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel took the house’s traditional codes and turned them on their head, debuting a see-through mesh suit recently donned by Kristen Stewart. And at Gucci Fall/Winter 2026, the first for its new Creative Director Demna, bodycon, day-after dishevelment, and diamond thongs reigned supreme. While some felt it was forced—a vision of performed sexuality, untethered from authenticity—others saw it as a harbinger of a hypersexual future, one that in the era of Ozempic feels specifically tied to size.

Emily Ratajkowski walks the runway for Gucci Fall/Winter 2026.

Gabbriette walks the runway for Gucci Fall/Winter 2026.

“The Kate Moss closing look, a low scoop-neck black sparkly dress with a visible thong, felt like a very specific declaration,” observes the content creator and cultural commentator Wadzi Ngandu. “Add the smoky eyes on every model and the skinny silhouettes, and it reads like a full embrace of a particular body ideal. The party-girl aesthetic and heroin-chic references; it didn’t feel accidental.”
Our fascination with super-sexy silhouettes has even made its way to the silver screen; on Season 3 of Euphoria, Maddy, Cassie, and Jules continue to wear some of television’s most insanely hot, insanely impractical outfits, while movies like Pillion, starring Alex Skarsgård, explore themes of BDSM. And who could forget that Sabrina Carpenter album cover?

Hunter Schafer as Jules Vaughn on Euphoria.

Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling in A24’s Pillion.

Of course, nobody’s wearing a faux nip-slip dress to high school English class. But in their daily lives, young people have embraced a watered-down, TikTok–ified version of naked dressing, popularizing trends like office siren—combining sexy pieces with conservative pieces to make borderline office-inappropriate outfits—and coquette, a girlified version of sexiness recently reenergized by Gen Z idols like Olivia Rodrigo. Gen Z also seems to value the art of styling, using accessories or glam to help make a look sexy, rather than relying on the clothes themselves.
“I don’t feel this year we’re going to see things as dramatic as we saw at Gucci, but things such as low-rise, obviously that’s coming back,” says Ngandu. “There’s a lot of leather, a lot of satin, and suits for women with a lot of the buttons open and a lot of skin showing.” But while sex may have infiltrated the runways, the red carpet, and pop culture—not to mention social media, where it’s the outrageous posts that drive the most traction—the trend is in direct opposition to a society that is growing increasingly conservative and decreasingly sexual. Generation Z is having less sex than previous generations—with a solid 67 percent of respondents on a recent Edubirdie survey saying they’d rather get a good night’s sleep than get lucky. Call it a sex recession, or perhaps a shift toward conservatism—but the runway has always existed to reflect or subvert what’s going on off the runway.

Olivia Rodrigo on stage in Barcelona in May.

“You could make a claim, and say,&nbsp;Oh, well, you know, there’s&nbsp;been a right-wing trend politically around the world, so women&nbsp;are being pressured either to be sex objects or to be tradwives,” says&nbsp;Steele. “But fashion change is caused by more than one thing,&nbsp;and it’s actually seldom only big social, political things. It&nbsp;can also be individuals. It can be designers who promote a&nbsp;particular look, or celebrities who like to wear it, and others&nbsp;copy it."
“I think that that combination of attitudes in the fashion world and among women—and Hollywood women, in particular—is tending toward people wanting to dress up in naked or sexy or even fetish-y clothes on the red carpet because they’re doing it, really, for themselves,” she adds. “And not just as a way of pandering to male attraction with corsets and high heels and bare legs."

Undressed to Impress: Inside Fashion's Hypersexual Era

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