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THE RUNDOWN
- American actress Dakota Johnson has become known for her red carpet naked dresses.
- The Verity star most frequently wears Gucci but she’s also recently donned Colleen Allen and Prada at major premieres and events like the VMAs.
- Johnson’s naked dress interpretations have ranged from shimmering see-through slips to peekaboo mesh gowns.
If you ever watched Trinny and Susannah’s early-2000s show What Not To Wear, you’d know the golden rule of finding your sartorial lane and staying in it. It’s a concept Dakota Johnson has clearly taken to heart — because no star loves a naked dress more than her.
If you recall the show, the hosts typically prescribed a rigid uniform — a dress that cinched your waist, pants that elongated your legs, or an oversized pendant necklace designed to distract from whatever body part they determined needed distracting from. Johnson has bypassed the chunky pendants and committed entirely to the body-baring sartorial trope. Indeed, she’s addressed the penchant before. In 2025 a reporter at Vogue Germany asked her about her preference for figure hugging fashion (never say we’re afraid to ask the hard question. The Verity actress simply responded: “It’s fun to wear a sexy dress.”
Related: The Story Behind Dakota Johnson’s Spectacular $350,000 VMAs Diamond Collar
That slinky silhouette, that flesh-coloured fabric, that little glimmer of embellishment — it all has Dakota Johnson’s heart. The earliest recorded instance of Johnson’s affinity for the style was in 2014, when she hit the red carpet at the LACMA Film and Art Gala in a nude-coloured strapless column gown by Gucci, her signature fringe fashioned into an outrageous top-knot-French-twist hybrid. The dress was fairly plain, which sort of explains the hair.
Depending on who you ask, though, some may say she began showing signs of flesh-flashing fascination two years earlier. Gracing the red carpet at GQ’s Men of the Year party at the Chateau Marmont in 2012, Johnson wore a black lace long-sleeve top by Joe’s Jeans, exposing the black bra she wore beneath, paired with some questionable leggings (reportedly from Gomez-Gracia). In fairness, it was 2012, and she was yet to meet her stylist, Kate Young.
One might deduce that it was Alessandro Michele who enabled her obsession. The pair met over a decade ago shortly after Michele became the creative director at Gucci, and before long, he was designing some of Johnson’s most naked (and famous) dresses. There was the flesh-coloured slip adorned with cabochons and strands of glimmering beads to create a derrière-baring illusion that she wore to The Lost Daughter premiere at Venice Film Festival in 2021. Then came the plunging V-neck she wore to the Madame Web premiere in 2024: a crystal-encrusted net worn atop a nude leotard. In 2025, a glimmering chainmail halter worn to the Kering Women In Motion Awards winked at Rihanna’s iconic naked dress from the 2014 CFDA Awards.
Johnson’s love affair with Alessandro Michele has endured for over ten years now (she’s often seen in Valentino), but we feel her commitment to the naked dress may be undying. She wore a lacy Colleen Allen dress to the premiere of Verity and less than a week later, donned a shimmering Calvin Klein Collection slip to the VMAs — both flesh-coloured, both with varying degrees of transparency. And most recently she stepped out at the VMAs in a ’90s inspired shimmering Prada look to present her friend Taylor Swift with the inaugeral Artist Director Honors Award.
Critics might say the naked dress thing is getting old. To them, Dakota Johnson might say, “If you looked this good in one, you’d want to wear them all the time too.”
Below, find her best body-con and body-baring naked dress moments:
Dakota Johnson’s Best Naked Dresses:
The post Dakota Johnson’s 13 Best Naked Dress Moments appeared first on ELLE.
