The most talked-about fashion moment from the 2025 Grammys red carpet on Sunday, February 2, wasn’t caused by clothes, but rather lack thereof.
Bianca Censori, the wife of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, wore a naked dress so revealing, many people wondered if the ensemble could be considered indecent exposure.
Although Censori, 30, arrived in a long shaggy coat, moments after stepping in front of photographers, she removed the outerwear to expose her look underneath: a skintight, flesh-colored minidress so transparent, it left nothing to the imagination.
The stunt was carefully orchestrated, as Ye, 47, shared photos of the couple rehearsing the coat-drop moment via Instagram. Many suggested it was an attempt to recreate the cover of West's latest album, "Vultures 1," cover, which features a topless Censori wearing only thigh-high boots and a thin strip of fabric over her derrière. Others said it mimicked ex-Playboy model Rita G.'s cameo in West's “Flashing Lights” music video. In the opening scene, Rita takes off her fur coat, leaving her in lingerie.
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Whatever the reason, the West and his wife promptly left before the awards ceremony — only to emerge later at an after-party to pack on the PDA, where Censori wore a second look — this time, a sheer black thong $20 bodysuit from Ye's new womenswear label, Yzy. Following his viral Grammys appearance, the designer announced the collection was for sale on Monday, February 3.
“First women’s piece,” he captioned the Instagram post.
But it was Censori’s red-carpet look, a “custom couture” piece, according to West, that dominated headlines, as he was quick to point out with screenshots of the spike in searches for “Bianca Censori Grammys” which surpassed “2025 Grammy winners” by a mile; it also trumped queries for Chappell Roan, Benson Boone and Kendrick Lamar, among other artists.
“My wife is the most Googled person on the planet called Earth,” West declared via Instagram on Tuesday, February 4. He even gushed: “We beat the Grammys.”
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Indeed, the shock value of the couple’s red-carpet stunt outshined the ceremony performances as well as Paris Fashion Week, which led to a number of experts speaking out on what made the latest in a long line of Censori's naked looks so impactful.
“I think the pearl-clutching about Bianca being naked is overblown and probably what she and Kanye were trying to get at in the first place,” wrote The Washington Post style reporter Shane O’Neill in an article published Monday, February 3.
“Functionally, there is very little that is different about what she wore compared with what was worn by Chrissy Teigen or Willow Smith,” O’Neill added, referring to the Christian Siriano design that Teigen, 39, donned with a lingerie-inspired lace bodysuit with a ball skirt; and Smith, 24, who turned heads in a custom bedazzled Fleur du Mal bustier and matching briefs.
O’Neill's colleague, Anne Branigin, pointed out the extreme distinction between “West’s coverage and Bianca’s nakedness.” Ye wore head-to-toe black in a simple T-shirt and trousers, which may seem insignificant to some, but as the reporter explained, everything down to his blacked-out sunglasses seemed to make a statement that said: “Women are offered up for consumption.”
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We've seen similar mise-en-scènes with Ye and his significant others before, from ex-wife Kim Kardashian to ex-girlfriend Julia Fox. As O’Neill put it: “He has a way of propping up his partner’s bodies while simultaneously hiding behind them.”
Branigin agreed: “The outfit, in isolation, truly doesn’t warrant much more than that.” The Washington Post reporter also noted that while it seems "unlikely, if not unfair, to assume that Censori was not a willing and active co-conspirator" in the invisible dress stunt at the Grammys, “the obvious power dynamics between [the couple] on the red carpet spoke volumes.”
Unlike most public displays of undress that rely on suggestion and titillation, like a striptease, Censori's nudity is direct and stark. The absence of any underwear, or its use as streetwear (as is often the case), removes any pretense of hidden allure.
Other experts were quick to remind Us that exhibitionism is hardly a novel idea, as naked dresses have been percolating on the red carpet, runways and in real life for decades. As journalist and longtime New Yorker contributor Anthony Haden-Guest once wrote, model Grace Jones showed up fully nude at the nightclub Studio 54 so much that it eventually became “a bore.”
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Perhaps the continued interest around Censori is because we’ve yet to hear her speak (save for impromptu karaoke at a Grammys after-party on Sunday, where Instagram videos captured her singing to Adele's hit song, "Rolling in the Deep").
However, much has been said about West, who has been accused of molding Censori into a replica of ex-wife Kardashian, much like he did when dating Fox, now 35, immediately after his divorce in 2022. She later described their brief fling in an interview.
“I learned very quickly that I was being weaponized,” Fox claimed while speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 2023. “I just felt like his little puppet.” During the start of their relationship, as part of an article written for Interview Magazine, she alleged that West had “transformed" her wardrobe mere days since they first met. This meant a “hotel suite full of new clothes” following her second date with the "All Falls Down" rapper, and soon thereafter, he convinced Fox get rid of almost all of her “old clothes.”
On a 2012 episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, then-boyfriend West and stylist Renelou Pandora gave Kardashian’s closet a similar clean-out, piling her shoes up to the ceiling. “I started crying,” she later revealed while appearing in a 2015 episode of Live with Kelly and Michael on ABC.
We also found out that West sent his wife lengthy trend memos. In one episode, Kim tells Kourtney Kardashian and Jonathan Cheban: “He sent me a whole email, like, ‘You cannot wear big glasses anymore. It’s all about tiny little glasses.' He sent me, like, millions of ’90s photos with tiny little glasses,” she said while sporting a petite pair of shades he picked out for her.
Professionally, Censori began working for West’s brand Yeezy in November 2020. The architectural designer had recently relocated to the United States from Melbourne, Australia According to her LinkedIn profile, Censori was still an architecture student when she co-launched a jewelry line, Nylons, with a friend.
Considering that Censori was already interested in fashion before meeting West, others experts, like the London Evening Standard’s Maddy Mussen, suggested that her characteristically bold and bare style choices were part of her aesthetic before the rapper ever entered the picture. Mussen interviewed a New Zealander who ran in the same circles as Censori as the time, who said: “I liked the content she posted and she and her friend group had quite a sexy, fun fashion sense," they recalled.
But as journalist Naomi Fry wrote in an August 2024 New Yorker article: “[Once] her relationship with her employer turned romantic, Censori began to attract attention less for her professional achievements and more for her outrageous getups, which have tended to involve aggressive displays of nudity.” Fry added: “She herself, in other words, has become her own design project, and, perhaps, her husband’s.”
Much of this could be chalked up not to West, but rather, the person behind many of Censori’s most risqué looks, Mowalola Ogunlesi, the Nigerian-born, London-based designer who has created a number of looks for Ye’s wife, along with A-listers including Naomi Campbell, Rihanna, Solange Knowles and Megan Thee Stallion, to name a few.
“[Bianca] has a lot of say in what she wants to wear,” Ogunlesi told The Post. The LVMH prize-winning designer, who has made looks for Kardashian and her daughter North West, 11, who she shares with ex-husband West, insisted that Censori and the rapper are working in tandem. “Everything Bianca is wearing is really from her and Ye’s brain.”
Meanwhile, Mussen won’t be convinced until they hear it from Censori herself. “It is unclear whether Censori is a pawn in Ye’s quest to have the “best undressed” [wife] in the world (a term he has used) or a willing accomplice in his new hyper-sexualized era,” the Evening Standard reporter wrote. “She has said little about their relationship publicly, preferring to remain the silent muse. Perhaps one day, NDA willing, she will tell her side of the story.”
