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."

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.”

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.”

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!