Welcome to the Build-A-Body Era
A harrowing exploration of why celebrities are suddenly constructing exaggerated curves via their outfits.
In the last few months of 2024, we watched as celebrities increasingly turned to items like panniers, cone bras, padded shoulders, optical illusion pecs and metal sculpted abs to create outrageously proportioned fictional bodies on the red carpet. At first glance, these constructed curves seem like little more than another way for the rich and famous to differentiate their wardrobes from the masses, going all-in on extreme silhouettes that would be impossible to wear in regular life without the aid of an UberXL and a personal assistant or two. But what if I told you this build-a-body era of fashion isn’t just another fleeting trend, but a visual red flag signifying the elite’s attempts at creating more rigid, insurmountable class and beauty standards, a means of turning back the clock on feminism while helping further the MAGA agenda, and the spiritual successor to Dior’s New Look? Sounds a little far fetched, I know, but bear with me for a sec.
As a quick refresher, panniers or side hoops are a type of historical women's undergarment worn to extend the width of a skirt to the sides while leaving the front and back relatively flat. And in recent months, we’ve seen the look pop up on a number of stars, like Ariana Grande in a very bridal Vivienne Westwood gown at the WSJ. Innovator Awards, Zoe Saldana who twice wore Balmain pieces that artificially enhanced her curves, Nicola Coughlan at the 2024 Fashion Awards in a Gaurav Gupta ballgown that featured a profusion of blue fabric exploding out of either side, and Halle Bailey who wore a white column dress with an umbrella-like peplum featuring strands of pearls and iridescent discs cascading off of it. Outside of panniers, Addison Rae, Chloe Bailey, and Ice Spice all attended events in versions of cone bras that dramatically extended their chests. Let’s also not forget the ways musicians JoJo Siwa and Doechii played with gender earlier this year, furthering the idea that one’s body is fully in flux by donning padded muscle suits and crystalized cod pieces. And most recently, Mikey Madison wore a Victorian-inspired Thom Browne gown featuring some very realistic embroidered 3D musculature. But this DIY silhouette isn’t just for the girls, we’ve also seen men starting to use clothing to fake gym bro proportions, like YouTuber James Charles who wore a chiseled metal bustier to the Gladiator premiere, and Jared Leto who stepped on stage rocking some double-wide shoulder pads.
Panniers and beefy shoulders may currently be trending, but they’re actually nothing new to celebrity fashion. Back in 2022, we initially saw this trend crop up as famous people coming out of quarantine began taking bigger fashion swings in an attempt to breakthrough all the red carpet noise. The look was largely spearheaded by Louis Vuitton’s collections at the time which featured very wide hips as well as tops that bore a striking resemblance to the type of thatched roofs that dot the English countryside. This look also felt like a logical extension of all the trompe l’oeil clothing we were seeing out there and a convenient way to fake some of the more extreme nudity that would become de rigueur in 2023. However, as quickly as these constructed curves appeared in the zeitgeist, they seemed to fade back out again only to suddenly reappear in force two years later, raising the question, why now?
