“You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress”: 50 Designs So Bad They Deserved To Be Shamed In This Facebook Group (New Pics)
If I learned anything from the countless episodes of Project Runway I watched as a child, it’s that fashion is all about taking risks. Sometimes designs flop, but that’s arguably better than being bland and quickly forgotten. So it seems like many designers have decided to err on the side of outrageous design, and no one knows that better than the members of You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress.
Contrary to what the name of this Facebook group says, apparently, you can! But you’re likely to be mocked for it online. Below, we’ve gathered pics of some of the most comically bad dress designs that deserve to be shamed, so feel free to channel your inner Tim Gunn and be sure to upvote all of your favorites (or those that you can’t believe anyone actually wore).
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Somewhere there is and older gentleman wondering how she got her pant up so high and wants tips on how he can do the same.
Famous fashion designer Vera Wang once said, “I want people to see the dress, but focus on the woman." Perhaps that’s why she’s been so successful, because her designs aim to highlight the wearer rather than distract from everything else around them.
Clearly, not all designers have the same mindset, though, or You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress wouldn’t have any content. This Facebook group has been around since April, 2020, and it has already amassed an impressive 61k members. The concept of the group is simple, as the rules state that it’s for “dress shaming only”, and the members stay active sharing all of the fashion atrocities they come across from all over the internet.
In a previous Bored Panda article featuring You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress, we reached out to the group’s creator, Mary Waldron, and she was kind enough to have a chat with us and provide some insight into how the group began in the first place. “The group name was actually inspired by a comment on a post in the group, ‘That’s it, I’m wedding dress shaming,’" Mary previously told Bored Panda.
"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,” Mary explained. Then in May, 2021, after Mary and the admin team decided the group needed a more inclusive name, You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress was officially born.
But this dress-shaming group has been popular since the beginning. “I noticed the group gaining more popularity about 6-7 months after I created it, and it was honestly out of nowhere,” Mary previously told Bored Panda. “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.”
"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,” she continued. “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."
Yes it’s hideous and 7 kinds of “why???!” But more than that I look at this and think: this looks horribly uncomfortable!
They made a beautiful person look like an alien with a skin condition.
Years ago, I had a makeover done. They piled heavy AF makeup on my face. I thought I looked like a f*****g clown, and when I tried to fan my face, I couldn’t even feel the breeze. I went straight home and scrubbed it all off. This? This looks horrifically uncomfortable. I would be clawing at my face to get that s**t TF OFF so my poor skin could breathe again. As for her head, putting my hair under a cap so this s**t could be applied would leave me overheated and sweating buckets (so much body heat escapes off the top of your head). I would be clawing at my head to get it off so my scalp could breathe and I could get cooled down. If a stylist even hinted that I should do anything like this, first I would laugh, second I would cuss a blue streak at them, and third I would fire them on the spot. Oh, and fourth, I would suggest they sign themselves into a mental institution for a full psych eval, because they’re f*****g nuts.
Y’all she wore this to troll the internet I doubt she thought it would be height of fashion
Imagine how long that took to stick every single one of those rhinestones onto her body ❤️
The worst thing about that, and I'm a huge fan of Doja, is that all the effort and she didn't even look OK. She said it was a nightmare to take off too. The latex was glued to her skin. Surely when you're that talented you shouldn't have to reduce yourself to this. A rare fail for this smart (but not here) musician.
Girl from Doctor who (the 13th doctor) the one whose brother is also made of crystals... come on someone must know
Non-stop pox. We had largpox a few mentions ago,now I would like to introduce you to the little sister
How much do you have to pay these women to go out in public wearing these abominations?
Good news! People are talking about you and taking your image viral. Bad news: they can't see who you are, and if they could, they'd regard you as a fool.
When you fall into a vat of red paint but act like you “meant to do that”
Who dose this. Like seriously who looks at this and says, "ah yes id love to wear that to my nieces' wedding" or some other c**p
Aaaaaaah, THAT'S the stuff that nightmares are born from. ........ Now I've got to sleep with the damn lights on, thanks for that, devil woman.
I can decide whether it reminds me of horror story pustules or a dog chew.
The photographer is trying to blend in but still hasn't quite got the hang of it yet
Doesn't belong here. There's nothing wrong with the dress, just the person wearing it…
Mary also previously shared with Bored Panda what makes a dress truly terrible, in her opinion. “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,” she explained. “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. 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 added.
If you tend to think all of the outfits featured on runways look ridiculous, you’re not alone. Renaud Petit wrote a piece for Medium breaking down why fashion shows are filled with unwearable garments, and he explains that those bizarre pieces we see on models aren’t ever going to end up in boutiques or in department stores. But they can be a great way for designers to express their creativity. “Designers are artists and they wish to express something through their designs,” Petit writes. “As you can easily imagine, a basic T-shirt or a pair of trousers are not deep enough to be turned into powerful artistic supports (unless you decide to write a strong statement on them but that is called ‘punk’ and has been done before and done again a million times). Many of them thus need to be able to create their own sculptures, real artworks that play the role of canvas.”
Did she come out of a tv and because I looked at it. I need to pass it on or she will come after me?
Petit goes on to explain that the looks featured in fashion shows are typically more of a “mood board” for what the actual collection will look like than they are pieces that should be sold on shelves. “This is actually why it is called ‘a show’ and why it is not simply a range of products displayed on still mannequins,” he writes. “It is some kind of dance in a carefully chosen venue, with finely-worked décor and music. The garments you see can be compared to costumes. The audience needs to interpret the moves and costumes to understand what the story is about in a ballet. This is basically the same with a Fashion show.”
“Runway pieces are like muses, they make for some kind of base on which the actual collection will rely on,” Petit continues, in defense of absurd pieces on runways. “Presenting such exaggerated pieces also makes it easier for us to understand what were the real inspirations behind the collection. They sometimes are used to subtly introduce new hints on what the designer wants to do for future seasons. After the show and if the public liked it, an idea may survive and be found in upcoming collections. There is thus another reason why Fashion shows are so weird-looking: they display several ideas from the designer in order to guide them and set the guidelines for future collections.”
Give my six year old a pair of scissors and your sweater, she'll do this for you. Then she'll claim she has no idea what happened. We have to hide all the scissors in the house.
Robin Givhan also wrote an article for The Washington Post explaining that there’s a good reason for fashion to be so weird. “Is weird fashion simply clothing struggling to be taken seriously as art? Perhaps, if the definition of art is an expression of creativity that aims to provoke an emotional response. But fashion is not the same as a painting or sculpture or ballet. Fashion is a commodity — it has to be worn, it has to live outside of a gallery or theater,” Givhan writes. “It doesn’t have to be worn by everyone. It doesn’t have to be appropriate for the office or the mall or a White House state dinner. You and your cul-de-sac neighbors don’t have to like it. The point is that you react to it.”
“If fashion makes you laugh, good. It means that it has jarred you from complacency. It means it has caught your attention. Now, think about why you laughed. Then ask why. Ask why, again. That’s the starting point of a conversation,” Givhan goes on to write. And I have to say, the photos on this list have certainly gotten a reaction out of me. So even if you hate every single dress here, that’s totally fine. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t fashionable… Many of them just also happen to be tasteless.
Is there any chance you would ever wear any of these dresses, pandas? I’m all for a bold choice myself, but I think I’ve got to leave these for the runway models and celebrities who have more money than brains. Keep upvoting the looks you find most atrocious, or so ugly that they’re brilliant, and let us know how you feel about this “high fashion” in the comments below. Then, if you’re interested in checking out even more of these wild dresses, you can find Bored Panda’s most recent article featuring You Can’t Just Slap Some Fabric Together And Call It A Dress right here!
Does that mean after the ceremony they celebrate by climbing lamp posts?
DESIGNER:what should we do with this extra fabric HER: PUT IT ON MY HEAD DESIGNER: what? HER:DO IT
Why is this here? Yes, it needed to be tailored better, but this is is beautiful.
Do some of these look ridiculous to me? Yes. Is the fashion industry on the whole wasteful, evil, over-priced? Yes. But, as Petit said, fashion as an art-form is often not given the respect it deserves. Maybe some of these look a bit crazy and silly, but the work and creativity that will have gone into some of those outfits is amazing. A lot of these were fun, experimental and interesting. Wouldn't it be so boring if everyone just always dressed 'pretty' and 'nice'? I would recommend HauteLeMode on youtube for breakdowns on some of these outfits.
I donÄt understand the point of this thread. Fashion can and should b art and art is not suppsoed to be pleasant and non-objectionable. It is supposed to challenge us - and many of these pieces do. Ok, some just look a bit rubbish. Probably from design students who do not have the budget to creat a truly expesnive version of that. But most of these are cool, in some way or other.
The attention to detail and engineering of these are remarkable! If you're someone that doesn't sew, you have no idea of the effort put in to these and the artistry it takes to create them!
You guys are missing the point. There's practical fashion, which is things people actually wear and buy, and there's art fashion, which is what most of this is. And a lot of them are actually really good as art fashion. The point of art fashion is not really to look "good", it's visual interest. Drama, experimentalism, et cetera; the things about them that look "off" and unfashionable are what make them interesting to look at. Do some of them take it too far? Yes, of course. There's good art and bad art. But most of these are actually really well-done in terms of accomplishing what they set out to do.
As someone once said, the definition of fashion: something so awful that we have to change it every six months.
Most of these are beautiful ideas executed to perfection. This is an artist's vision and there seems to be a lot of people on here who know nothing about art or fashion judging and ripping someone's hard work to shreds. Just because you don't understand the vision, doesn't mean a design deserves to be ridiculed.
This reminds me that guy who made ridiculous outfit and tried to infiltrate to fashion week. And he was successful. He almost died from laugher... :D
i didnt realize this was only dresses so i thought it was ‘weird fashion in general’ and i thought for sure hazza would b here but i’m happy he wasnt bc he always looks great 🙃😉
i sorta disagree with the title... ive slaped fabric together before and it looked good 😅
I realize the models don't have a choice and a few of these weren't awful, but for the most part they all look ridiculous or downright stupid.
Whoopie looks great. As for the others, some are OK, mostly they're dire and hilarious 😂
I'm trying to decide what the reaction would be if I wore any of those to work (I'm a high school teacher)
What are you talking about?! Are you a professional in fashion by any chance, that you know about skills and talent needed to construct most of these designs?
Load More Replies... Do some of these look ridiculous to me? Yes. Is the fashion industry on the whole wasteful, evil, over-priced? Yes. But, as Petit said, fashion as an art-form is often not given the respect it deserves. Maybe some of these look a bit crazy and silly, but the work and creativity that will have gone into some of those outfits is amazing. A lot of these were fun, experimental and interesting. Wouldn't it be so boring if everyone just always dressed 'pretty' and 'nice'? I would recommend HauteLeMode on youtube for breakdowns on some of these outfits.
I donÄt understand the point of this thread. Fashion can and should b art and art is not suppsoed to be pleasant and non-objectionable. It is supposed to challenge us - and many of these pieces do. Ok, some just look a bit rubbish. Probably from design students who do not have the budget to creat a truly expesnive version of that. But most of these are cool, in some way or other.
The attention to detail and engineering of these are remarkable! If you're someone that doesn't sew, you have no idea of the effort put in to these and the artistry it takes to create them!
You guys are missing the point. There's practical fashion, which is things people actually wear and buy, and there's art fashion, which is what most of this is. And a lot of them are actually really good as art fashion. The point of art fashion is not really to look "good", it's visual interest. Drama, experimentalism, et cetera; the things about them that look "off" and unfashionable are what make them interesting to look at. Do some of them take it too far? Yes, of course. There's good art and bad art. But most of these are actually really well-done in terms of accomplishing what they set out to do.
As someone once said, the definition of fashion: something so awful that we have to change it every six months.
Most of these are beautiful ideas executed to perfection. This is an artist's vision and there seems to be a lot of people on here who know nothing about art or fashion judging and ripping someone's hard work to shreds. Just because you don't understand the vision, doesn't mean a design deserves to be ridiculed.
This reminds me that guy who made ridiculous outfit and tried to infiltrate to fashion week. And he was successful. He almost died from laugher... :D
i didnt realize this was only dresses so i thought it was ‘weird fashion in general’ and i thought for sure hazza would b here but i’m happy he wasnt bc he always looks great 🙃😉
i sorta disagree with the title... ive slaped fabric together before and it looked good 😅
I realize the models don't have a choice and a few of these weren't awful, but for the most part they all look ridiculous or downright stupid.
Whoopie looks great. As for the others, some are OK, mostly they're dire and hilarious 😂
I'm trying to decide what the reaction would be if I wore any of those to work (I'm a high school teacher)
What are you talking about?! Are you a professional in fashion by any chance, that you know about skills and talent needed to construct most of these designs?
Load More Replies...