“I went out with essentially a diaper made of safety pants holding my pants together.”
There’s no worse fashion mishap than stepping out and realizing something has gone awry with your outfit. Whether it’s a tear at the seam, a shirt that shows a little more than intended or a broken zipper, it can be incredibly embarrassing to experience.
But these wardrobe malfunctions happen all the time -- especially for celebrities who are often wearing intricate and delicate outfits on the red carpet. Although it can be embarrassing to experience fashion disasters in public, these stars have thankfully been able to laugh off all of their mishaps -- and usually have a team of stylists on hand to make things right!
Read on to hear about these celebrity wardrobe malfunctions…
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View Story1. Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet says one of her worst wardrobe malfunctions didn’t actually happen on the red carpet. Instead, she was at a 60th birthday party wearing a designer gown that had a zip from top to bottom. While she was in the bathroom, she unzipped the dress -- and the zipper promptly broke, leaving her entirely exposed from behind.
“I am standing there completely naked, basically wearing a black cape that is dangling from my neck,” she told People. “We had to stuff the dress in the janitor’s closet and I had to wrap myself in a tea towel and proceed with the 60th birthday party wearing a tea towel!”
2. Seth Rogen
Right as Seth Rogen was about to take the stage at the 2018 Golden Globes, he had a major wardrobe issue. Seth says that he bent down to pick something up and totally “blew out” his pants -- ripping them from the very front to the very back. With just minutes before he needed to give a speech, Seth pulled aside a stylist who gave him safety pins and then he had to get creative.
“I chaps-ed them. The whole thing was gone,” he said on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “I just literally just grabbed like a rack of safety pins, went into the bathroom, took my pants off, turned them inside out, pinned them with 15 safety pins all up, making like a metallic stitching thing from the base of my butt to the top of my crotch.”
He added, “And then the second I fastened the last one, they were like, ‘We’re ready for you on stage’ and I went out with essentially, like, a diaper made of safety pants holding my pants together.”
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View Story3. Mandy Moore
Mandy Moore was saved from a wardrobe malfunction by her friend Sophia Bush. While attending the 2021 Emmy Awards, Mady explained that after hugging her pal, one of the thin straps on her dress broke. By the time she got backstage, Sophia had already alerted everyone and they were ready to stitch things back up.
“I was in this red dress with really thin spaghetti straps. Sweet Sophia Bush walked by to go backstage, and I jumped up to hug her, and a strap just popped,” Mandy told People. “The next commercial break, I ran back there, and Sophia had told them, so they had red thread ready to go. Thank God for her!”
Back in 1993, Kate Beckinsale was at her very first Cannes Film Festival for the premiere Much Ado About Nothing but she almost lost her top on the red carpet. On the way to the premiere, her bodysuit came undone and she wasn’t able to fix it in the car. When she arrived, she told her co-stars Keanu Reeves and Robert Sean Leonard about the issue and they helped her keep it together by holding onto the back of the gusset.
“I had bought the bodysuit in the Sock Shop at the airport and when I got in the car to drive to the premiere with Denzel and Pauletta Washington, all the poppers in the crotch popped themselves open and it flipped up like a roller blind,” Kate recalled on Instagram.
She continued, “I didn’t feel it was appropriate to go delving around in my undercarriage with all of us in the back of the car so I just quietly panicked. Walked out onto the biggest red carpet of my life and whispered to Keanu and Robert Sean Leonard what had happened… Absolute legends who may not even have fully understood the physics of what was happening or even heard the word ‘gusset’ before but both jumped in to save me no questions asked.”
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View Story5. Lil Nas X
When Lil Nas X made his debut on Saturday Night Live, he had an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction. While dancing on a stripper pole, he split open his leather pants, leaving him fully exposed. He immediately realized something was wrong and had to spend the rest of the performance making sure he was covered up. He even had to skip some dance moves so he wouldn’t show anything off.
“So I was pretty much going down on the pole, doing my little sexy dropdown, and boom, I feel air! I was like, ‘There’s definitely a breeze going on.’ I also felt like some popping still happening while I was down there, so I was like, ‘God, please don’t be on TV already.’ And SNL is actually live," he said on The Tonight Show.
He continued, “The worst part is at the end of the performance, the dancers are supposed to touch me and tug on me or whatever, and they were tugging on the pants, and I was like, ‘Please, God, no.’”
Back in 2014, Anne Hathaway says she had a major wardrobe malfunction on the way to the Met Gala. When she was just a block away from the event, she sneezed and her entire dress split open. As she pulled up to meet up with Calvin Klein designer Francisco Costa, she had to break the news to him that the dress had split.
“I’ve never seen someone turn green before,” she said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “And I said, ‘It’s gonna be fine! I can go on the carpet, I’m going to keep my arm down and I’ll hold it in place. We’ll get inside and there’s gonna be a needle and thread!’ And he goes, ‘Pull over.’ So we pulled over, went to a hotel, found a seamstress, she sewed me into it.”
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View StoryPriyanka Chopra had a major wardrobe issue on one of the biggest nights of her life. When she won Miss World in 2000, she says she was sweating so much from her nerves that her strapless dress wouldn’t stay up. Not even fashion tape helped! By the time she was crowned, she had to keep her arms at her sides in order to keep her dress up.
“A memory I will never forget from November 30th 2000 is the feeling of balancing on pencil heels with a gorgeous Hemant Trivedi dress that was falling off the entire evening because my body tape would not stay on, as I was sweating so much from nerves,” Priyanka wrote on Instagram. “Hence if you google the pictures, after I win, I look like I’m doing a namaste in gratitude but I’m actually desperately trying to keep my dress up.😬😂 clearly I survived and it was all well at the end.”
Keira Knightley had a fashion mishap while wearing one of Hervé Léger’s iconic bandage dresses. She says that just as she was about to step out of her front door to attend the British Independent Film Awards, the dress split from the bottom to the top, leaving her entire body exposed.
“It was just full-on naked body. So it was a real moment of going, ‘I think that dress was a bit too small.’ Fortunately, two of these dresses had been delivered. It was at a point where I was being followed around by many paparazzi. Luckily, I was in my flat, I was not out the front door, so nobody got a picture of the fact that this dress had split,” Keira told People.
She added, “Thank God it [didn’t] happen on the red carpet because it could have happened at any point that evening and I was incredibly fortunate that it happened when it did.”
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View Story9. Lucy Liu
Lucy Liu’s worst wardrobe malfunction happened at the 2004 Met Gala. Just before she was about to hit the red carpet, she realized the zipper wasn’t working. She ended up having to be sewn into the dress and could only remove it by being cut out of it. Lucy says she thankfully could still use the bathroom by pulling the dress up but it was a delicate situation.
“I was wearing Ungaro and Giambattista Valli was the designer at the time. [Valli] met me at the hotel and he was like, ‘Oh my God, the zipper won’t work!’ He had to sew me into the dress, and then I had to cut myself out of it,” she told People.
Lucy continued, “My stylist was there too, they were both sewing. I could go to the bathroom, it was just that the side zipper didn’t work. That happens when you have a dress that’s very unique, it just starts to fall apart unfortunately.”
10. Tara Reid
Tara Reid had an infamous wardrobe malfunction at a birthday party back in 2004. While being photographed on the red carpet, her boob was accidentally exposed. Although the photo went viral, Tara says she doesn’t feel like it was that big of a deal.
“People act like it was the worst crime in the world. It was a mistake, you know!” Tara told FHM magazine. “But you would think my boob had popped out and shot Gandhi! My hooters are under control. I’m taped up now, totally. I’m using double tape. Double double tape. My boobs are going nowhere again.”
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View Story11. Maren Morris
While Maren Morris was performing at Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic in 2024, fans were concerned she had a wardrobe malfunction because of a super high slit in a denim skirt she was wearing. Fans believed they were getting a glimpse of her nether regions but she says she was actually wearing underwear! It turns out she had actually had another wardrobe malfunction earlier in the day too and the skirt was her backup option.
“Yeah, against my will, a video circulated recently of me wearing a denim skirt with a giant slit in it. I was wearing underwear. It was nude underwear, but it looked like my whole vagina was out,” she shared on Cosmopolitan’s Cheap Shot series.
She added, “Actually, before I put that skirt on, I had another wardrobe malfunction with a skirt before it. So the denim skirt was, like, my backup option. I was like, ‘I have to be sure to wear underwear with this.’ I wish I'd worn, like, dayglo underwear so people would definitely know I had it on. But you live and you learn.”