50 Times Dresses Looked So Bad, They Deserved To Be Shamed On This Facebook Group (New Pics)

According to Kelly, one of the two administrators running ‘You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress,’ the Facebook group is so popular among internet users because of the amount of fresh content that gets posted there, daily.

"I think it’s so popular because, every day, there is a new fashion fail," she told Bored Panda that this is what keeps people engaged and entertained.

We were curious to get the administrator's thoughts on why some clothing designers fail to see just how bizarre their ideas are.

"I think sometimes they do see it, but sometimes fashion is a form of art," Kelly told us that designers have specific artistic visions in their minds. "I’m sure they see how strange it is, but we didn’t make the dresses, so I’m sure it’s art to the designer."

The admin added that, "At the end of the day, if you enjoy your own canvas, that’s all that matters."

Meanwhile, Bored Panda wanted to find out how someone might diplomatically tell their friend that the dress they've picked out really isn't working out.

"I’m very a honest person, so I think everyone should just be honest," Kelly, the administrator at ‘You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress,' told us. However, she added that nobody should go overboard with their criticism.

"You also shouldn’t push it. If what they're wearing is kinda ugly, and what they want to wear, then so be it," she said. "You shouldn’t sit there and try to convince them that it’s ugly/not the vibe."

Trends seem to follow cycles and something that was old-fashioned one decade can make a sudden, rather unexpected comeback when you least expect it. According to Loretta G. Breuning, Ph.D., it’s not a coincidence that high fashion “looks eerily similar” to the clothes people wore when they were young.

“It’s the circle of life: Grandma’s clothes end up in a thrift shop. Hipsters patronize thrift shops. High-end designers imitate hipsters,” she writes on Psychology Today.

The Facebook group is currently run by two administrators, and anyone hoping to become a member of the style-loving collective has to agree to abide by the group’s rules.

“Dress shaming ONLY!” the admins note. “We do NOT shame bodies, or people. Especially on things that cannot be changed. We also are only shaming dresses. No shoes, hats, shirts, pants, etc.,” they note, adding that hate isn’t welcome in the community.

What’s more, the team running the show asks its members not to post their dream dresses. There’s a specific thread dedicated to that, so you can do it there. What’s more, the entire point of the group is to shame ugly dresses—there is no need to tell anyone whose outfit it actually is. So, if you mention that it’s your BFF’s wedding dress, your post may actually get declined! That also means covering all faces and identifying information in the pics.

Stating the obvious somewhat, but if you post a photo of a dress in the group, it will get shamed by the other members. “Don’t get [angry] if you post a dress you like/wore and people make fun of the dress. That’s your issue, not ours. It’s a shaming group. Stop being so soft,” the admins note. What’s more, it’s up to the team to decide if a dress is ugly enough. If your post isn’t approved, “find an uglier dress.”

The group was created in mid-April of 2020 and, at the time of writing, has grown to house 61k members. For a previous feature about ‘You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress,’ Bored Panda had spoken to the original founder, Mary Waldron. She walked us through the history of the group and why she believes it grew so large, so quickly.

"I noticed the group gaining more popularity about 6-7 months after I created it, and it was honestly out of nowhere. I never expected it to be such a big group, but honestly, I should have because, at the time, shaming groups were a big trend on Facebook," she told us back in 2021.

"Looking back, I think the thing about shaming groups in general that brings people together and really resonates with them is the idea that there are things so bad out there that they feel compelled to share them with everyone for a good laugh, just like when a group of kids in school will see a teacher with a really bad tie and make a few jokes. To me, it’s that same concept, just on a much larger scale, that really makes these groups what they are,” Waldron told Bored Panda.

"The group name was actually inspired by a comment on a post in the group, ‘That’s it, I’m wedding dress shaming,’" she said.

"The group was originally just a wedding dress shaming group called ‘You Can’t Slap On A White Skirt and Call it a Wedding Dress,' but over time, as more and more people joined, I decided to allow other types of dresses,” the founder shared how, eventually, she expanded the scope of the community.

"The dresses I tend to really gawk at are the ones that look like they could fall off, tear, or just completely malfunction at any given moment. But outside of the group, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to fashion because a person’s taste is as unique as their own,” Waldron said that impractical dresses, for her, are what deserve being poked fun at. However, everyone should take the dress wearer’s opinion into account, too.

"At the end of the day, if a dress makes you feel happy when you wear it, then you wear it relentlessly because your body is your own to dress how you want to,” she said that the most important thing for the dress wearer is that they, themselves like the way they look. It's important to embrace that, no matter what some internet users might think about the outfit.

For some more fantastically horrid (and sometimes so-ugly-they’re-beautiful) dresses, check out Bored Panda’s previous features about ‘You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress’ right here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

In the meantime, feel free to share your honest opinions about the dresses you’ve seen so far in the comments, dear Pandas. And if there were any designs that you’d genuinely love to wear in public, let us know which ones they were!