21 Red Carpet Looks That Hurt To Wear

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19-02-2025

They say "beauty is pain," but I say that's a pretty terrible saying. Personally, I think it's a bit ridiculous that people — mostly women — are pressured to endure clothing that restricts their breathing or physically hurts to wear all in the name of "fashion."
Here are 21 red carpet looks that hurt to wear:
1. At the 2024 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian wore a custom Margiela by John Galliano gown with a metal corset. In a Season 6 episode of The Kardashians, she said, "I've never felt this way before, where I feel like I can't breathe.'I can handle it for so long, but it's like, I have to pee, I can't breathe…I literally was dying...I'm literally gonna throw up. I've never been more uncomfortable...I've never been in this much pain before. I was gonna sneak out right before the dinner, but then I walked by [Anna Wintour's] table, and Anna goes, 'Perfect, you're here. Can you sit in my seat while I go make my rounds?'"
Here's what her back looked like when she took off the corset. She said it was "abso-fucking-lutely" worth it.
She said, "Yes! That's just who I am. If you look good, it was all worth it."
2. At the 2019 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian wore another uncomfortable-seeming dress — a wet look Mugler outfit that consisted of a corset made by Mr. Pearl beneath silicone-covered silk organza. On Instagram, she shared that she had to take "corset breathing lessons from none other than Mr. Pearl."
Kim also told the Wall Street Journal, "I have never felt pain like that in my life. I'll have to show you pictures of the aftermath when I took it off — the indentations on my back and my stomach."
3. At the 2019 Billboard Latin Music Awards, Anitta wore a Galia Lahav look. She told Entertainment Tonight, "It's painful. A lot. I'm here smiling to you, pretending everything's okay, but I'm dying here inside. It's everything. Everything — hair, shoes, clothes."
4. Zendaya famously wore a vintage metal Mugler suit to the Dune: Part 2 premiere in London. She told Vogue, "This suit, everybody knows it. And I was like, 'I wonder if I could wear that.' And so, I sent it to [stylist Law Roach ], and I was like, 'What if we wore this for the premiere?' He was like, 'Are you being serious?...Don't play with me. Like, don't get me started on something and make me do this, and you're gonna like chicken out at the last minute and be too scared to wear it.' And I was like, 'I mean, if we can do it.'
She continued, "One of the men who originally made it was with us, and he was like, 'You know, we can try it, but there's also a world where certain parts won't fit.' Like, our proportions might be very different — my elbow is a little bit lower or my whatever, then it doesn't work because there's certain hinges and places where your arms and things need to move. But we tried it on, and I was like, 'Guys, I think it's fitting.' It fit like a glove, and I was like, 'This is so crazy.' And everybody was like, 'Woah!' It just felt very like, I was meant to be, whatever. Immediately, I think after wearing it for like 10 minutes or less than that, I got, like, really, like, lightheaded. The metal conducts and holds onto heat very quickly and kind of traps heat in."
5. Another one of Zendaya's iconic Dune outfits — the wet-look Balmain gown from the 2021 Dune premiere in Venice — was modeled after a corset she saw on the runway, but it was custom-made and molded to her body. After her stylist, Law Roach, contacted the designer about collaborating, they sent a woman to Zendaya's house to make a cast of her body. She told Harper's Bazaar, "This is made of leather, but it kind of looks liquid, but it's all solid. So it's really difficult to sit in and to breathe in because it doesn't, you can't breathe. It's just, like, hard, so the whole movie, I'm like...just focusing on breathing."
6. At the 2018 Met Gala, Zendaya wore a cumbersome Joan of Arc-inspired look. She told Vogue, "The day before, going there, putting it on, I was like, 'Wow.' It was so heavy 'cause of the beading, but it was so beautifully constructed, and it's Versace. And typically, like, I can handle a night out, you know, with my heels and everything. I've been wearing heels for a long time, but I don't know. It was something about a mixture of, like, wearing these platforms and, like, the heaviness of my dress. I was struggling. I was like, 'I need to sit down.' But it was all worth it."
"I'm wearing a complete bodysuit, so there's a barrier, so you already have a layer of material kind of on your skin. As the days were coming up, I was like, 'This is a bad idea. Like, why did I do this?' But I put it on, I went out there, and I did it," she said.
7. When Kylie Jenner made her Met Gala debut in 2016, she wore a silver Balmain gown.
Afterward, she shared a picture of her bruised feet and scratched-up ankles on Snapchat with the caption, "When ur dress made you bleed and ur feet are purple." In a follow-up post, she added, "It was worth it though."
8. Then, at the 2017 Met Gala, Kylie Jenner wore a tight Versace dress.
On an episode of Life of Kylie, she tried it on for the first time. She said it needed to be tight enough for her to "kind of suffocate."
E!
In her Netflix documentary Miss Americana, behind-the-scenes clips revealed that she had trouble breathing in the outfit.
Netflix
10. At the 2018 Met Gala, Rihanna's pope-inspired Margiela look was difficult to wear because of its weight. She told Entertainment Tonight, "It was heavy. Every step was a squat. I promise you my butt gained from that night. I had another option that was a lot more simple, same Margiela, but I felt like it was an insult to the people who sat there and, like, hand-beaded that entire thing, to just say, 'No, put that in the archives.' It was so great, I couldn't deny it."
John Shearer / Getty Images for The Hollywood Reporter
11. At the 2016 Oscars, Jennifer Garner wore a custom Versace dress. On The Tonight Starring Jimmy Fallon, she said, "Do you know how they make it? See how I have a waist right now? I don't have one in real life anymore. What they do is, they move your organs around. There are basically two men who come in with screw guns, and they screwed me into a metal corset — this isn't true, but it was a metal corset, and it did take two Italian people who were talking very quickly. And the next thing you know, my ribs were compressed."
Steve Granitz / WireImage / Via Getty
12. In a since-deleted Instagram post, Priyanka Chopra Jonas said, "My second Met Gala outfit was this blood-red Ralph Lauren beautiful outfit with the gold hood. But the corset under that thing, I couldn't breathe. I felt like it reshaped my ribs. So hard to sit during dinner and I obviously couldn't eat too much during that night."
Dia Dipasupil / WireImage / Via Getty
13. At the 2011 Met Gala, Beyoncé wore a Emilio Pucci gown. It was reportedly so tight that she could barely walk.
Dimitrios Kambouris / FilmMagic / Via Getty
She needed assistance from her stylist, Ty Hunter, and her husband, Jay-Z, to walk up the famous steps.
Larry Busacca / Getty Images
14. Naomie Harris wore an Armani Privé gown to the 2017 Golden Globes. She told Lorraine, "I was very glad to get out of it. It was like a corset. I could barely breathe! I wasn't allowed to eat or drink from 12 o'clock, as I couldn't go to the toilet in that dress! I got carried to the car by the man who made the dress, and he lay me flat so I wouldn't crease it!"
Kevork Djansezian / via Getty Images
Here's an Instagram picture she shared showing how she had to ride in the car:
View this photo on Instagram
Naomi Harris / Via instagram.com
15. At the 2021 Met Gala, Hailey Bieber wore a tight strapless Saint Laurent gown that restricted her movement. On The Ellen DeGeneres Show, she said, "So, the thing about the dress was, I am really, like, OCD and crazy about the way things fit. Like, I am always, like, pinching things, like, 'It can go in here.' So we were kinda tailoring it to, like, the very last day in the very last second. And my whole team was like, 'You cannot sit or, like, move in a weird way until you get inside.' They're like, 'If you rip the dress inside, that's fine. But if you rip it before, there is, like, nothing we can do.'...I was able to sit inside, but it was very fitted."
Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images
16. Heidi Klum wore a Miss Sohee dress to the 2023 Billboard Women in Music event.
Steve Granitz / FilmMagic / Via Getty
On her way, she shared an Instagram video demonstrating how tight her dress was.
Heidi Klum / Via instagram.com
17. At the 2018 Met Gala, Bella Hadid accessorized her Chrome Hearts gown with a 10-pound veil. On her Instagram story, she said, "If anyone was wondering why I couldn't move, it's because a legend by the name of @jenatkinhair sewed a whole entire 10-pound veil to my head."
Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images
Here's a closer look at her veil:
Taylor Hill / Getty Images
18. While hosting E!'s red carpet at the 2023 Grammys, Laverne Cox wore an "ethereal Blade Runner" Vera Wang dress. She told the New York Times that the corset she wore with it was so tight, she had trouble breathing.
Axelle / FilmMagic / Via Getty
19. Kendall Jenner wore a two-piece Prada look with a heavy skirt to the 2022 Met Gala.
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
On an episode of The Kardashians, she shared that it was difficult to wear. She couldn't get into her van unaided, and she had a panic attack on the way to the event.
Hulu
20. At the 2023 Met Gala, Chloe Fineman wore a Wiederhoeft gown. She told Vogue, "The first fitting was hilarious. It was Ana de Armas's week on SNL. We had just finished our table read that Wednesday, and Jackson [Wiederhoeft, the designer] came to do a fitting at 30 Rock in the SNL costume department. I was like, 'I hope they pick the American Girl doll sketch!' I was so distracted. And then he squeezed me into a corset, and I couldn't breathe." She also said her hosting duties influenced the design. She said, "The corseting is why I fell in love with him, but it can't be too tight, because, you know, I don't want to fall over."
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
21. And finally, when Anya Taylor-Joy wore a weighty Dolce & Gabbana gown to the 2018 Met Gala, Jimmy Fallon "saved [her] life." On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she told the host, "I was wearing a dress that was ridiculously heavy, and I couldn't really move, and I was just kind of trying to get through the evening. And at the end of the night, I'm at the top of the stairs. The gorgeous Hailee Steinfeld walks past me, has a very complicated, like, three-train thing, and I get wrapped up in it. And I'm like, 'Oh, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die on the steps of the Met, darling.' But literally, just out of nowhere, the 'hand of God' came out and pulled me out of it, and it was you. And you were just so sweet about it. You were like, 'Hey, I'm Jimmy. Nice to meet you.' I was like, 'Okay, thank you.'"
John Shearer / Getty Images for The Hollywood Reporter
Here's the full clip:
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What are your thoughts on the saying "beauty is pain?" Let us know in the comments!