The Look That Refuses to Dry Out
By Anushka Quadir ‘27
Photos above by Willa Sullivan
There is something undeniably hypnotic about the “wet look”—fabric clinging to the body like a second skin, light catching a slick surface, movement that feels effortless and alive. It is a fashion fantasy that never quite dries up. One moment, it is a Grecian statue, marble carved to mimic light fabric cascading over the body, and the next, it’s Kim Kardashian arriving at the Met Gala looking like she emerged from the ocean with diamonds for raindrops.
But what is it about the wet look that makes it so timeless? Why do designers return to it, season after season, century after century? And why is it still reduced to sex appeal when it has always been about so much more?
Since ancient times, the near-naked female form in art has been read as sensual, while the exposed male body was idealised as heroic. In classical sculpture, women were often shown in clinging drapery that suggested the body beneath, admired for its detail but tied to beauty and desire. The wet look has always carried this duality, enhancing the body while remaining at the mercy of perception. Instead of asking whether it is sexual or not, maybe the better question is, why is this the only conversation we keep having?
Ancient Influence
The fascination with movement was everywhere in classical art, and nowhere is it more beautifully realized than in the Terracotta Statuette of Nike from the 5th century BCE, now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nike’s robe falls and clings like wet silk, each fold carefully shaped to reveal, rather than conceal, the body. Fabric pools around her in delicate ripples, framing her form without stiffening it. Even carved from terracotta, she feels weightless, as if she might lift into the air at any moment. Nike is not trapped in stone. She is captured mid-flight, her form shaped by the air pressing against her body.
The same obsession with movement and fluidity appears later in the marble torso of Iris, part of the Parthenon’s West Pediment sculptures, produced between 438 and 432 BCE under the direction of Pheidias. Iris, the winged messenger goddess, is sculpted with a sleeveless chiton that clings in some places and lifts away in others, suggesting the force of wind rushing against her body. Though only a fragment remains, the movement captured in the way her garments stretch and flutter gives the marble a softness that feels almost fluid, as if she were suspended in water rather than carved from stone.
The compromised poses, the exposed flesh, the clinging fabric — all of it was admired, but also inevitably sexualised. Still, to focus only on that would be missing something essential. These sculptures captured more than beauty or desire. The drapery was not just an excuse to reveal the body; it was a way to celebrate movement, texture, and the fleeting relationship between fabric, skin, air, and light. It turned stone into something living, capturing statues mid-moment as they resisted stillness and refused to settle.
Fashion, thousands of years later, is still chasing that same feeling.
Figures to the right: L: Terracotta Statuette of Nike, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, c. 5th century BCE. R: Marble Torso of Iris, West Pediment of the Parthenon, British Museum, designed by Pheidias, c. 438–432 BCE.
Grace Jones in Alaïa hooded gown (Tara Gonzalez and Dani Maher, “The History—and Eternal Power—of the Hooded Gown,” Harper’s Bazaar Australia, 2023.)
20th Century
Few designers translated the classical fascination with movement into modern fashion more elegantly than Azzedine Alaïa. In the 1980s, Alaïa introduced the now-iconic hooded gown, a design that became synonymous with fluidity and power. Grace Jones, one of Alaïa’s greatest muses, famously wore the look in his 1986 spring haute couture show in Paris, moving down the runway like a sculpture come to life. (1) The high-shine, almost metallic fabric hugged her body in loose, liquid folds, draping and gathering like a second skin. The dress wasn’t wet, but it alluded to water’s fluidity — the same tension between fabric, form, and gravity that ancient sculptors once carved into stone.
Alaïa’s approach to drapery was shaped by more than just an obsession with the body. Raised in Tunisia, he was influenced by the flowing silhouettes and modesty of North African and Middle Eastern dress. The hooded gown drew from traditional robes and religious garments, but Alaïa reimagined them into something that honoured both movement and form. Alaïa reimagined them into something that let women move freely, wrapped in fabric that enhanced their power rather than restrained it.
The beauty of Alaïa’s wet look was not in literal dampness but in how the fabric floated and clung with a natural ease. It brought structure and softness together, making the body feel alive rather than sculpted into stillness.
At the same time, Thierry Mugler was taking the wet look into another world entirely. His Fall/Winter 1995 couture show was a spectacle of latex, PVC, and metallic sheen, with designs that clung to the body like a high-gloss skin. Models walked the runway in moulded corsets, black latex bodices, and dresses that looked like poured liquid — reflective, high-shine, and fluid in motion. Mugler’s interpretation was not soft or ethereal. It was bold, futuristic, and theatrical, turning the body into a living surface of light and tension.
In the late 1990s, Mugler took the wet look in a new direction. His Spring 1998 couture show explored wetness differently: using sheer draped fabrics and glossy textures that seemed to flow over the body like water sliding down glass. (2) The collection balanced high drama with classical fluidity, proving that the wet look could be both futuristic and rooted in timeless ideas about movement and form.
Contemporary
This vision came full circle in 2019, when Mugler came out of retirement to design a custom silicone dress for Kim Kardashian’s Camp Met Gala look. Dripping in crystal beads, cinched into a corset, and finished with slick wet hair, she brought the wet look back to the forefront of fashion discourse. Mugler described the look as a “California girl getting out of the ocean” (3)—a striking evolution of what the Greeks sculpted and Alaïa draped. Mugler’s design reimagined the ancient connection of body and light for an audience primed for fantasy. More than just a display of couture craftsmanship, the look was a spectacle of aspiration, celebrity, and escapism.
Two years later, at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, Zendaya offered another evolution of the wet look. Wearing a custom nude-tone leather gown by Balmain, sculpted exactly to her body’s measurements, Zendaya appeared almost carved from stone. Her gown rippled with a precision that felt both avant-garde and timeless. Following the event, Zendaya posted an Instagram story of Undine Rising from the Fountain, a 19th-century marble statue of a water spirit, pointing directly to the artistic heritage that continues to shape how we imagine bodies in motion. (4)
At the same time, the wet look slipped into the everyday. The wet-hair trend exploded across beauty culture, worn by Zendaya, Rihanna, the Kardashians, and the Hadids. It moved beyond red carpets and runways to Instagram, TikTok, and beauty columns. As Vogue noted, the wet-hair look became synonymous with sleek, sexy sophistication. No longer reserved for high fashion, people began recreating the illusion at home with gels, oils, and glossing sprays.
Still, as the wet look spread through mass culture, its meaning began to splinter. In spaces like wet t-shirt contests and Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoots, water became a tool to expose the body, stripping away nuance and turning the wet look into a spectacle of consumption. Wetness in these settings was less about movement or texture and more about what could be revealed. It became a way to frame the body as something to be looked at, rather than something alive or in motion.
High fashion, by contrast, approached wetness as a way to shape and elevate the body, not just uncover it. Designers and stylists treated the wet look as a study of form, texture, and movement. Wetness was about interaction, not exposure. In their hands, it remained something dynamic and intentional — a way to celebrate the body’s relationship to the elements around it, not flatten it into a static image.
But it raises the question: can the wet look only be understood when it’s framed as art — in sculpture, on the runway, in editorial styling? What happens when it's taken out of context and placed in everyday settings, stripped of intention and reframed as spectacle? Maybe its meaning, like water itself, depends entirely on where it lands.
Figures above: L: Quinci LeGardye. "Zendaya's Wet-Look Balmain Gown Fits Like a Second Skin," Harper’s Bazaar US, 2021. R: Amy de Klerk, “Kim Kardashian West’s Mugler Dress Took Eight Months to Make,” Harper’s Bazaar UK, 2019.
Footnotes:
1. Tara Gonzalez and Dani Maher, “The History—and Eternal Power—of the Hooded Gown,” Harper’s Bazaar Australia, 2023.
2. Laird Borrelli-Persson, “Was KK’s Met Gala Wet Look Inspired by Mugler’s Spring 1998 Couture Collection?” Vogue, 2021.
3. Amy de Klerk, “Kim Kardashian West’s Mugler Dress Took Eight Months to Make,” Harper’s Bazaar UK, 2019.
4. Quinci LeGardye. "Zendaya's Wet-Look Balmain Gown Fits Like a Second Skin," Harper’s Bazaar US, 2021.