6 Red Carpet Outfits That Seriously Hurt (Literally)

We love a good red-carpet revue, and many of our favorite celebrities are so used to running this fashion gauntlet that they make every outfit look effortless. Between admiring all this styling and the couture, it's easy to forget the old adage that "beauty is pain" — and that some of these flawless ensembles are actually far from comfortable. As Brazilian singer Anitta once told Entertainment Tonight, "It's painful. A lot. I'm here smiling to you, pretending everything's okay, but I'm dying here inside. ... It's everything. Everything — hair, shoes, clothes."

Now, most of us have probably suffered through a few of our own sacrifices in the name of fashion, whether we've endured the hurtful pinch of too-small (or too-tall) shoes, fought for breath in a fitted top, or regretted the chafing of anything high-waisted against our love handles. However, some stars take this run-of-the-mill discomfort to a whole different level. From Kim Kardashian's alarming corsets to Bella Hadid's weighty headpiece, certain famous red-carpet looks were also famously painful to wear.

Kim Kardashian is known for being a fan of corsetry, which is just one of the many controversial Kardashian body trends that have caused a stir. However, that doesn't mean she's always comfortable in her tightly cinched looks. Take her extreme silhouette at the 2024 Met Gala, for example. Kardashian's Maison Margiela gown, replete with silver floral lace, hinged on an almost inhumanly narrow waistline, but an episode of Hulu's "The Kardashians" showed the extreme physical discomfort of that tighter-than-tight corset. 

"I'm literally gonna throw up. I've never been more uncomfortable," Kardashian told her team. The episode also showed the reality star finally removing her painful gown — and the deep, reddened indentations left in her skin by its unforgiving structure. "I've never been in this much pain before," Kardashian said. But would that discourage her from trying similar looks in the future? Probably not. As Kardashian rather questionably added, "If you look good, it was all worth it."

As one of the queens of method dressing, Zendaya has taken some fashion risks we'll never forget. One of her biggest swings — and successes — was probably the vintage Mugler armor that she showed off at the "Dune: Part Two" premiere in London in early 2024. However, the chrome and plexiglass outfit was also stifling and hard to wear for long. "Immediately, I think after wearing it for like 10 minutes or less than that, I got, like, really, like, lightheaded. The metal conducts and holds onto heat very quickly and kind of traps heat in," Zendaya told Vogue. "I'm wearing a complete bodysuit, so there's a barrier, so you already have a layer of material kind of on your skin." Zendaya looked fantastic, but she did have a few concerns about wearing the steamy armor for hours on end. "As the days were coming up, I was like, 'This is a bad idea. Like, why did I do this?' But I put it on, I went out there, and I did it," she concluded.

"The Great" star Elle Fanning was delighted to serve on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 and showed off a whole series of stunning looks throughout the event. However, one outfit left Fanning swooning a little too literally. As she later explained in an Instagram post, "Oops, had a fainting spell tonight in my 1950s Prada prom dress, but it's all good!" She notably added the hashtags #dresstootight and #timeofthemonth, casting blame both on her fitted bodice and wooziness from menstruating. "Fainting is something I do. I was on my period. It was such a crazy feeling," Fanning later told InStyle. "It honestly happened at the best moment because I wasn't on the red carpet. Could you imagine? That would have been kind of epic, though."

In 2018, "The Queen's Gambit" star Anya Taylor-Joy graced the Met Gala red carpet in a Dolce & Gabbana gown that was simply to die for — and actually made her life flash before her eyes. On "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," she recalled a particular moment of panic and how Fallon apparently rescued her from a nasty fall. "I don't know if you know this, but you actually saved my life once," she told the late-night host. "I was wearing a dress that was ridiculously heavy, and I couldn't really move. ... At the end of the night, I'm at the top of the stairs. The gorgeous Hailee Steinfeld walks past me, has a very complicated, like, three-train thing, and I get wrapped up in it. And I'm like, 'Oh, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die on the steps of the Met, darling.'" Unable to stand her ground against the weighty fabric or even move enough to catch herself, Taylor-Joy thought she was about to tumble down the gala's famed stairway — until, as she thankfully told Fallon, "Literally, just out of nowhere, the 'hand of God' came out and pulled me out of it, and it was you."

Anya Taylor-Joy wasn't the only one struggling with heavy garments at the 2018 Met Gala. Superstar Rihanna rocked up to the event in one of the most stunning Met Gala looks we'll never forget: a lavishly bejeweled, Catholic-inspired Margiela ensemble that made her work for it. "It was heavy. Every step was a squat. I promise you my butt gained from that night," the "Umbrella" singer told Entertainment Tonight. But from her perspective, all that effort was worth it as a way of honoring the outfit's designers: "I had another option that was a lot more simple, same Margiela, but I felt like it was an insult to the people who sat there and, like, hand-beaded that entire thing, to just say, 'No, put that in the archives.' It was so great, I couldn't deny it."

The 2018 Met Gala was truly one for the ages, but it also inspired a lot of pretty painful looks. Not to be left out, fashion model Bella Hadid turned up to the red carpet in a sleek, monochromatic gown and latex corset from Chrome Hearts, but the real show-stopper was her long veil, which trailed behind Hadid in a waterfall of black lace. Unfortunately, the stunning accessory was also stunningly heavy. As Hadid wrote in a now-expired Instagram story, "If anyone was wondering why I couldn't move it's because a legend by the name of @jenatkinhair sewed a whole entire 10-pound veil to my head" (via Allure).