Sheer Panic
Nudity has become a sartorial provocation, with control of the gaze marking the line between self-authored expression and performative objectification.
The dress Bianca Censori wore at this year’s Grammys- provoking outrage on social media, calling into question indecent exposure laws in the state of California. Image sourced via L’Officiel ©All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
The most coveted clothing at the moment is that which makes you look as if you’re wearing none at all. Social media has been worshipping Intimissimi cashmere second skins, worn by Addison Rae in her ‘Headphones on’ music video- and SKIMS have just released the Ultimate Pierced Nipple Bra. The simulation of nudity transcends and even disregards sex appeal, it’s about the assertion of control over one’s body- positioning ones body as a site of liberation. To appear vulnerable is power.
This paradox has reared its provocative head in recent media moments; Charli XCX’s sheer Dilara Fındıkoğlu dress at the 2025 Brit Awards prompted 825 official complaints, echoing a broader discomfort also aimed at Sabrina Carpenter’s suggestive performance later that night. Charli’s response repositioned ITV to be the perverted voyeur: ‘I heard that ITV were complaining about my nipples. I feel like we’re in the era of ‘free the nipple though, right?’. Fashion is being misread and wrongly indulged in as provocation. What’s remarkable isn’t the outrage itself, but its consistency- a tired chorus from the same moral luddites clutching their pearls. One suspects that what truly offends is less so the showing of skin, but the absence of shame when doing so.
Charli in her Dilara Findikoglu gown. The dress is constructed from layers of sheer fabric, prompting 825 complaints to Ofcom- a broadcasting regulatory body within the government . Image sourced via Elle © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
However, other instances of opaque dressing have towed the line between the female body being both liberated and policed, this questions the boundaries when it comes to sheer dressing- when does the exposed body manoeuvre from being an artful site of liberation, to offensive.
When Bianca Censori dropped her fur coat at the 2025 Grammys to reveal a completely sheer minidress- California’s indecent exposure act was called into question, social media’s response was polarizing, the majority being firmly in camp outrage. Interestingly, a deeper discomfort lay in the performance of power showcased in the context surrounding Bianca Censori’s outfit. The majority of Censori’s outfits since marrying Kanye had been of a similar ilk, most notably finished with a significantly more clothed Kanye towing Bianca along, a couple of paces infront. These recurring appearances increasingly resembled practices of public humiliation rituals, in which the female body becomes a vessel of which to perform male dominance. This notion was abruptly confirmed on February 7th of this year when Kanye tweeted ‘‘I have dominion over my wife. This ain’t no woke ass feminist shit. She’s with a billionaire, why would she listen to any of you’. This tweet- in synthesis with claims of his ex-girlfriend Amber Rose, who explained he forcefully made her wear a similarly revealing dress at a public event while scapegoating his wishes as ‘fashion genius’- suggests Kanye is dressing Bianca to inflate ego through proxy voyeurism.
Bianca Censori stands in her Grammys 2025 dress, being watched by a fully clothed Kanye West- a stark visualisation of power dynamics where exposure becomes a performance of control. Image sourced via euronews ©All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
This is markedly different to liberatory sheer dressing- the definitive difference being a complete overlook of the male gaze. Sheer dressing sources its power as art through agency. Complete ownership, choice and power over one’s body is acutely political and symbolic.
Take Julia Fox- her style is similar in it’s second-skin nature, seen often running errands in boxers, lingerie, with nipple to the wind, however, Fox also adorns wedding gowns, and offbeat full coverage dresses, true avant- garde knows variety. As Vogue wrote in 2023, Julia dresses for the female gaze- achieving this by transmuting herself as a vessel of camp and cunt- exercising unadulterated self-expression which can undoubtedly be considered art. Julia doesn’t concern herself with appeasing the male gaze, in fact she dresses to completely ignore by revelling in revealing clothing. Julia is for the girls, and her style is an active expression of liberation- hence it’s met with a markedly differing response to Bianca’s. Maybe people can smell agency through the screen- begging the question: is there a difference between being ‘looked at’ and looking while being looked at?
Julia Fox photographed in New York in 2023. Her outfit is a leather co-ord by The Uncommonist- An avant-garde ensemble that weaponizes provocation. Her skirt features rear cutouts attached to a horse tail, while the cropped hooded top tapers off at the sternum. Julia’s outfit exposes all traditionally deemed provocative body parts, yet subverts this exposure through control, exercised through her defiant gaze back at the camera- challenging who gets to wield power in the act of looking. Image sourced via BYRDIE ©All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
