Fashion has, of late, left little to the imagination. Of the dresses which graced the feted carpet at this year’s Karl Lagerfeld-themed Met Gala, and its subsequent after-parties, there were a few stand-outs. On the carpet, there was Emily Ratajkowski** **wearing sheer Tory Burch gown; at the event’s official afterparty, Olivia Wilde opted for a see-through silver macrame Chloe dress, which Kendall Jenner similarly attended wearing a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it custom Nensi Dojaka bodysuit inspired by a look from Chanel’s spring/summer 1994 collection, which was debuted on the runway by supermodel Nadja Auermann.
The thread that ties the trio together is not that they’re three of the most famous women in the world, nor is it Harry Styles, the ex they all share, but rather that the intrepidly sheer outfits they wore for fashion’s big night out were all designed by women.
Perhaps that doesn’t surprise you; after all, barely-there dresses are hardly new news. After the sartorial lull of the pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns, designers endorsed flesh-flashing fashions across the board at the spring/summer 2023 shows. Acne Studios, Bottega Veneta and Valentino all wove varying iterations of see-through dresses into their collections, with the latter dressing Florence Pugh in that famously sheer fuchsia gown at Couture Fashion Week (cue the world losing its mind at seeing a pair of exposed boobs). Their dresses might be transparent, but the industry’s lack of female designers conceiving and crafting sheer designs is less so.
Despite its reputation as a female-oriented industry, fashion is still one with an achingly transparent gender gap. There are fewer women CEOs in Fashion than in the Aerospace or Finance industries. Over 85% of graduating students from top fashion schools are female and one in six individuals employed by the fashion industry globally identifies as female, but only around 14% of the top 50 major fashion brands are run by women. According to shopping platform Lyst, which analyses the behaviour of 200 million online shoppers, the top twenty brands of Q4 2022 included just four that are helmed by women; Dior, Miu Miu, Versace and Prada, which is co-creative directed by Raf Simons. The labels most celebrated last year for their female celebrity-endorsed sheer creations – namely Schiaparelli and Valentino – are run by men.
“She’s a jpg girl.”
But if the flesh-flashing fashions of today are anything to go by, a female-lead change is on the horizon. Poster Girl, the buzzy, barely-there London label on the tip of the industry’s tongue, is helmed by two women, Francesca Capper and Natasha Somerville. The pair described their autumn/winter 2023 collection, which was brimming with their now-signature body-conscious DNA, as “Luxury hoe”. British-Albanian designer Nensi Dojaka, who won GLAMOUR's fashion designer of the year award last year and the illustrious LVMH Prize in 2021, has firmly established her eponymous label as a purveyor of conceal-and-reveal dresses. Proving her commercial clout too, sales of Dojaka’s spring/summer 2023 rose by 127% from the previous season. A total of 90 international brands now stock her pieces, an increase from 59 the year previously. Ukrainian designer Masha Popova, the avant-garde designer who cut her teeth at Maison Margiela and Celine, is another cementing her status. Dua Lipa and Bella are already fans of the Central Saint Martins alum’s minimalism.
Dilara Fındıkoğlu, the ethereal label of its namesake British-Turkish founder, is also making a name for itself among the male dominated industry. Her minimal wares have been championed by Rihanna, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajoswki, who wore one of Fındıkoğlu’s transparent designs to the Met Gala afterparty. These are female designers subtly but concretely subverting sheer designs from their male industry counterparts.
Pugh’s words in the face of the media storm that followed her sheer Valentino dresses’ debut, as fierce and relentless as the naked dressing trend itself, perfectly conceded. “It has always been my mission in this industry to say ‘fuck it and fuck that’ whenever anyone expects my body to morph into an opinion of what’s hot or sexually attractive.” Indeed, female designers reclaiming sheer designs is about women saying ‘f*ck it and f*ck that’ and reclaiming the narrative surrounding dressing women’s bodies. The diktat is clear: sexy’s coming back, and it’s strictly on our terms.
