She's Bringing Sexy Back

For spring summer 2023, clothes are suddenly revealing, tight, and plunging. But what's unique about this new sensual mood is that female designers are leading the charge

- Rachel Tashjian

Last summer, getting dressed ceased to mean putting on clothes. All around New York, I saw the crests where bums meet thighs, nipples beneath transparent shirts, bellies bared in meetings. Personally, I started wearing beach cover-ups to run errands and stuffed the slips that came with my sheer, diaphanous dresses and skirts into the back of my closet, charging outside in see-through clothes with no compunction. It was in part because it was so damn hot but also because I had this exotic but urgent feeling that I just didn't care what anyone looking at me thought.

The designer Maryam Nassir Zadeh noticed several of her fellow New Yorkers dressing this way, including herself; she often shares outfit pics of sheer clothes over bikini bottoms or no bra with her highly engaged Instagram followers. The attitude inspired her own New York Fashion Week show in September, which showcased her treasured collection of fabric scraps pieced together over models' otherwise nude bodies. Some of the textiles were barely big enough to cover a single breast; she thought of them like gems or shells adorning the body. "Is this enough?" she recalls thinking. "But then I thought, there's something sensual and ethereal and meaningful in the sense of, like, [each textile] has an essence and an aura."

The next day, Tory Burch's models were more covered up but no less exposed. Her opening look was a sheer white elbow-length shirt revealing a gray bra beneath and a ruched darker gray miniskirt squeezed over a sheer black skirt. Much of the collection was similarly layered, with abs, cleavage, and shoulders revealed by fabric that had been wrapped or gathered, or in conservative cuts made sensual with see-through cloth.