They say “beauty is pain,” but have you ever thought about how wild it is that such a phrase is so common? Like, why should it be considered normal for people (let’s be real, mostly women) to endure pain or even risk injury just to achieve a specific look?
Here are 16 times celebs revealed how truly uncomfortable red carpet outfits can be:
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During Milan Fashion Week in 2024, Anne Hathaway wore a red Versace dress with a corset. On Instagram, she shared a video showing how impossible it was to sit normally in the dress.
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Zendaya's wet-look Balmain gown from the 2021 "Dune" premiere in Venice was modeled after a corset she saw on the runway. 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."
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The gown was actually molded to her body. After her stylist, Law Roach, contacted the designer about collaborating on a custom look, they sent a woman to Zendaya's house to make a cast of her body.
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Elle Fanning "had a fainting spell...in [her] 1950s Prada prom dress" at the Trophée Chopard Dinner during the 2019 Cannes Film Festival because her gown was too tight.
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images for Chopard
She reportedly fell off her chair when she passed out, but her sister, Dakota Fanning, helped her get back up.
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At the 2020 "Downhill" premiere, Page Six asked Julia Louis-Dreyfus if she felt "fuckable" in her Dolce & Gabbana gown. She replied, "I can't breathe, so I don't know if that's meaningful."
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At the 2011 Met Gala, Beyoncé's Alexander McQueen gown was reportedly so tight that she couldn't walk up the stairs unassisted.
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Her stylist, Ty Hunter, and her husband, Jay-Z, had to help her up the steps.
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At the 2018 Met Gala, Priyanka Chopra Jonas "couldn't breathe" in the corset under her Ralph Lauren gown. In a since-deleted Instagram post, she said, "I felt like it reshaped my ribs."
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"So hard to sit during dinner, and I obviously couldn't eat too much during that night," she concluded.
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At a Victoria's Secret event in 2023, Doja Cat wore a dress with a plunging back that revealed a VS thong. In since-deleted Instagram story posts, she said, "It's crazy when you got a dress on and your whole vagina is out the whole night and the straps on the dress pull ur tits all the way down to your knees and all you asked for was a slip dress but i digress...A bitch coulda got a uti...What a beautiful night MINUS them UNADJUSTABLE straps."
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She continued, "When i tell u the panty was built into the dress so when i put it on, the shoulder straps pulled the string up through my cervix and split me like a block of sharp cheddar cheese."
She also said that she'd be "feeding it to the moths."
She also said that she'd be "feeding it to the moths."
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At the 2018 Met Gala, Bella Hadid wore a Chrome Hearts gown with a coordinating Chrome Hearts x Gareth Pugh 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."
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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."
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She added, "Anything for fashion, right?"
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At the 2019 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian's wet look Mugler outfit required "corset breathing lessons from none other than Mr. Pearl [a famous corset maker]."
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She 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."
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At the 2021 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian wore a full-coverage, head-to-toe Balenciaga jumpsuit. It obscured her vision to the point she struggled to recognize her own sister. On her Instagram story, she said, "Kendall [Jenner] was calling my name, and I couldn't see who it was, but I saw the outline of her sparkly dress."
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She also told Vogue, "I fought against it. I was like, I don’t know how I could wear the mask. Why would I want to cover my face? But [creative director] Demna and the team were like, 'This is a costume gala. This is not a Vanity Fair party where everyone looks beautiful. There’s a theme and you have to wear the mask. That is the look.'"
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At the 2020 Oscars Vanity Fair afterparty, Kim Kardashian wore a vintage Alexander McQueen gown. In an Instagram story video, she shared, "I literally have to lay down in the car, like I cannot sit up because my dress will rip or pop or something."
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"But it’s worth it — I’m a queen," she added.
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Similarly, Kylie Jenner wore a Ralph & Russo dress to the 2020 Oscars Vanity Fair afterparty. On Instagram, she said, "Couldn't really sit in this but it was worth it."
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At the 2016 Met Gala, Kylie Jenner wore a silver Balmain gown. Afterwards, 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."
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In a follow-up post, she added, "It was worth it though."
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And finally, while trying on her Versace dress for the 2017 Met Gala on an episode of "Life of Kylie," Kylie Jenner said that the waist was "really loose." Demonstrating how tight she wanted it to be, she said, "It needs to be like this, like, where my body looks crazy. Like, I need to kind of suffocate."
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