No to the Latex Dress

If you’ve spent any substantial amount of time on the internet recently (which, I’m sorry), you’ve likely heard rumblings about a recession indicator. Depending on who you ask, this now-viral phenomenon—a niche social happening that points to an economic slump—can be any myriad of things. Ed Sheeran’s comeback. Peplum tops. Tinned fish.

Simply put, it’s a trend that has been plucked from its early-2010s grave and reinstated in 2025 relevancy. Some examples are innocuous (whole-body deodorant comes in handy in a heat wave), others are worth celebrating (little monsters seem to be having a ball). But today, I’m not here to sing praises; I’m here to admonish a long-gone item creeping its way back as economic uncertainty rises: the latex dress.

Sticky, circulation-cutting and generally bothersome to wear, the wet-looking rubber slip, in its most mainstream sense, is often associated with Kim Kardashian’s Kanye marriage and 2010s runways, including Erdem and Mugler. In truth, it was all over during that decade: Katy Perry wore a white rubbery mini during her 2010 Teenage Dream era; Beyoncé donned a peach iteration at the 2014 Met Gala. Looking back, these examples are relics of a specific moment in time, when Snapchat reigned supreme and BBLs were the beauty standard. And there the latex dress has mostly remained… until recently.

For this comeback, you can thank/blame Kylie Jenner, who has been single-handedly ushering the item’s return for months. At Coachella, she wore a canary-coloured slip to promote her canned-cocktail brand, Sprinter. She also released a red plunging latex dress for purchase from her other company, Khy.

The latter has gone TikTok viral, where fans praise the skin-tight design, dousing its interior in powder and slicking the outside with oil. The entire act of putting on a latex dress has become its own masochistic trend on the app, where creators shake an audible dress—shrunken and springy—in front of the camera before wriggling into it for the evening ahead.

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Del Core / PHOTOGRAPHY VIA LAUNCHMETRICS.COM/SPOTLIGHT

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Runways have also been signalling its return. Del Core presented fleshy coloured tight slips. Dolce & Gabbana offered a cinched latex trench. Even Tory Burch flirted with the contentious fabric, via an A-lined number with plasticky panelling. And aside from Kardashian revivals, at the MTV EMAs, style icon Jodie Turner-Smith signed off on the trend in a head-to-toe set with a latex opera gloves to match.

“Soft as latex, sweet as honey,” Kylie Jenner teases in a promotional video for her Khy latex dress. But to me, this is a gross mischaracterization. Soft is a teddy bear or a pair of Ugg boots. A noisy flab of fabric that contracts three sizes smaller when you take it off? Not exactly an easygoing ensemble.

This is not to bash the fetishwear origins of the rubber design. Popularized by punks in the 1970s and embraced by club kids in the 1980s, the latex dress became a staple of subversive fashion—a uniform worn by sex workers and embraced in other underground communities that historically start trends. But it’s not the garment’s background I have beef with. It’s the sticky slip being sold to me as a must-have by billionaires with side hustles. Because though it has roots in resistance, it’s grown into an A-lister status symbol.

You see, the latex frock is the 2010s version of the Hervé Léger bandage dress. The latter was a staple of celebrity going-out fashion in the 2000s, worn by everyone from Victoria Beckham to Lindsay Lohan. Over time, it became a ubiquitous emblem of conspicuous consumption and wealth signalling. Then, in the 2010s, the It dress du jour took a plasticky turn, with Kim Kardashian, in particular, sporting the latex dress everywhere. By the end of the decade, it was largely written off as dated. But now, when people are vulnerable and in dire need of a unifier, these slips are inexplicably slithering back into the spotlight.

They appear slightly sweaty. They’re concerningly tight. Their unforgiving silhouette feels restrictive, not unlike the era we’re living in. Though I wish it weren’t true, I cannot seem to prevent the returning reign of latex dresses. At least they make a fun squeaky noise when you walk? An outfit and a show!