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.