What’s the Point of Runway Nudity?

If you think back to the most recent season of Girls, you’ll notice that Lena Dunham’s naked body was set on display exactly zero times. This varied tremendously from previous seasons, where one of the most prominent debates off-screen rotated around her nudity. My personal belief was such that if she believed she needed to show her body to make a point, let her shimmy topless until the cows crawled home, udders soiled, (though of course not devalued) by the public domain. But a countering popular opinion was that “nudity without purpose” is nothing more, nothing less than distracting.

And any performer will textbook-tell you that the first thing to avoid in espousing your point of view is distraction. I can understand that, but couldn’t quite wrap my head around why she may have diverted the conversation until the most recent runway season, where nipples were trending at a pace that could have put the virality of the return of the 70s to shame.

It made me wonder if nudity in fashion has a purpose. And furthermore, I guess, if it needs to have a purpose.

I happen to take no issue with a woman exposing her body. This should likely come as no surprise for someone who ranked within the 88th percentile of extroversion according to Myers-Briggs. In fact, I spent an entire week in Mexico wearing bathing suit tops that were so sheer, my own husband (noting their futility) recommended I take them off so as to prevent tan lines.

And I did — which really makes me wonder why the prevalence of uncovered nipples on a majority of runways (cue: Gucci’s opening look, Saint Laurent’s architecturally drunk one-shoulder dress, a set shown with a pair of Jacquemus pants that may or may not have been Margiela in a past life and Yeezy’s own body-sock) has affected me at all.

I’m chalking it up to one of two things. On the one hand, I may be desensitized and possibly a bit jaded by the overwhelming shock-value that brands consistently attempt to demonstrate. Yes, the spectacles are great, the performances are entertaining, but we come for the clothes — right? If there are no clothes, what are we there for? In some cases, it really might be that a set of nipples will support a garment better than any bra or blouse could — one of Valentino’s closing red dresses from the collection that will be forever called The Zoolander Show confirms that.

But for a single-shoulder Saint Laurent dress, from a collection that has become so much about the consumer and not at all about the critic, what point, save for I’m High Fashion, Hear Me Roar, is being made? In an age when we are subject to condemnation for effectively saying, or thinking just about anything, how are we supposed to address or make sense of nudity’s pervasiveness in fashion? Do we embrace it and perhaps accept what might become a change in the way we participate in fashion, or do we cry “distraction!” until just like with Girls, it goes away without anyone really even having noticed?

All Images via Style.com