Designers have, at various points during the autumn-winter 2024 season, taken the naked-dressing phenomenon toward its final destination: skintight and see-through garments that leave almost nothing to the imagination. Given the current politics around women’s bodies—a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling granted frozen embryos the same rights as children, meaning people could be held liable for destroying them—some of the most extreme examples of this trend have inspired due criticism from journalists. “[Women] are already being treated like objects,” fashion critic Vanessa Friedman wrote in a midweek Paris Fashion Week report. “Do we really need more objectification?”
This is the precise slipstream Emily Ratajkowski has found herself within. “I’ve felt objectified and limited by my position in the world as a so-called sex symbol,” she said on her book’s release, which bore down on the often uncomfortable ways in which her image has been used to sell heterosexual fantasies, in 2021. “I’m still grappling with how I feel about sexuality and empowerment.” And even a cursory scroll through the author’s comments sections will bring these tensions to the fore: “Emily complained a lot that she is always objectified and sexualized,” one Instagram user said this week. “But her whole branding and every single picture of her posted on the internet is about her sexy body.”
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That particular comment appeared beneath an Instagram carousel wherein EmRata reveals a long triangle of torso and cleavage beneath a Ferragamo coatdress cut with a navel-grazing neckline. It is obvious that empowerment means different things for different people, but this particular outfit seemed more confrontational than it did sexualizing: an in-your-face subversion of traditional men’s tailoring. Much like going pantless in an oversized jumper and ballet flats—which is something a just-permed Emily Ratajkowski did yesterday afternoon while flitting between fashion shows in Paris—it is a fun transgression in clothing and an Edie Sedgwick breaking of the rules. Perhaps even a visible sign that women have plenty of legs to stand.
This article first appeared on British Vogue.
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