Nearly-naked celebrity looks, ranked from grossest to greatest
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's most naked of them all?
Nicki Minaj's pasty-baring look at Paris Fashion Week served as a reminder that not every skin-baring celebrity outfit is created equally. From the cringe-worthy to the celebratory, revisit the best and worst of nearly-naked A-list fashion.
Not included on this ranking are naked magazine covers, like Gigi Hadid's recent Vogue Paris shoot, or the times where celebrities Instagrammed themselves in the nude, Kim Kardashian-style. (Otherwise, this list would never end.)
Rose McGowan
To loosely quote Romeo and Juliet, "a rose in literally any other outfit would smell as sweet." With Marilyn Manson on her arm, Rose McGowan made the unfortunate choice of a black mesh gown and matching underwear for the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. The look is easily McGowan's most famous red carpet ensemble, for all the wrong reasons.
Tie: Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj
There's something about the VMAs that encourage celebrities to take daring fashion risks. Lil Kim's purple wig/dress/pastie combination at the 1999 ceremony fell on the wrong side of provocative. Take a full look at Kim's infamous getup here.
Minaj debuted a Kim-inspired look at Saturday's Haider Ackermann show during Paris Fashion Week. However, as some eagle-eyed Internet users noticed, Picasso's famous nudes may have been the motivation behind the outfit.
Miley Cyrus
Another chest-baring outfit on the VMAs red carpet came courtesy of Miley Cyrus, who sported silver boots, a filigreed skirt and not much else to the 2015 awards.
Two years earlier, Cyrus showed off a flesh-colored bikini while twerking on Robin Thicke at the 2013 VMAs.
Amber Rose
The queen of the nothing-but-beads dress is Cher, who accepted her best actress Oscar for Moonstruck in a Bob Mackie sequined gown in 1988.
Among the many famous names following in Cher's see-through footsteps is Amber Rose, who wore a cascade of beads to the 2014 VMAs.
Jaime Alexander
For celebrities who want to stay warm while showing skin on the red carpet, strategically-placed cutouts are an eye-popping compromise, like Jaimie Alexander's super-revealing Azzaro Couture gown at the Thor: The Dark World premiere in 2013. Somehow, Alexander was wearing "something under there," as she revealed to Jay Leno.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Dresses with sheer sides allow stars to show off their toned posteriors without baring too much cleavage, as seen on Westworld star Angela Sarafyan earlier this month.
But the gown that first introduced much of the public to the side-butt phenomenon was Gwyneth Paltrow's Antonio Berardi gown at the 2013 Iron Man 3 premiere. “Let’s just say everyone went scrambling for a razor," she told Ellen at the time. "So I went from being the most beautiful to the most humiliated in one day.”
Rita Ora
Two years after Paltrow's daring look, Rita Ora took the side-cutout a step further with a sheer back. While the front of Ora's Donna Karan Atelier gown at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscars party looked covered-up, the rest of her dress revealed otherwise.
Bella Hadid
Celebrities love a good naked dress, garments that are often sparkly, sometimes nude-colored, and always see-through. After walking the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, Hadid chose an afterparty dress that showed just as much skin as her runway looks.
Rihanna
Rihanna's 2014 CFDA Awards look is an essential moment in the naked dress' origin story, helping lead the way for stars like Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé to embrace sheerer red carpet looks.
While Rose McGowan's nothing-but-mesh look landed her at the bottom of the list, Rih's Adam Selman fishnet dress and matching headscarf won accolades from style-watchers, which she paired with a fur stole that she strategically employed onstage to stay covered.
On the red carpet, she showed off her trademark sternum tattoo and everything above it.
Beyoncé
As with everything else she does, Bey kept the naked-dress trend looking refined in crystal-studded Givenchy at the 2015 Met Gala.
Jennifer Lopez
Which dress could possibly take the No. 1 spot other than the navel-baring gown that launched Google Images?
Jennifer Lopez' green Versace at the 2000 Grammy Awards was so head-turning, according to a blog post by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, that the search engine built a whole new service to show it off.
"(Google users) wanted more than just text. This first became apparent after the 2000 Grammy Awards, where Jennifer Lopez wore a green dress that, well, caught the world’s attention," he wrote. "At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen. But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: JLo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born."
See more of 2016's most naked celebrity outfits.