Some celebrities love taking fashion risks.
This year on the red carpet, stars like Shania Twain and Jared Leto chose to channel animals when posing for the cameras at the Grammy Awards and Met Gala.
Check out some of the most outrageous looks from 2023.
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Country star Shania Twain caused a stir when she walked the red carpet at the Grammy Awards wearing a black and white spotted suit with a red wig. She paired the look with a matching oversize hat.
One X user compared Twain to a character from the Super Mario video games, Toad, who wears a similar hat to the one Twain was wearing, writing, “Shania Twain being a Mario fan was news to us.” The user also posted a photo with the caption, “Shania Twain plays homage to Mario Kart in this Grammys look.”
Another X user referenced one of Twain’s most popular songs, writing “Man, I feel like Cruella De Vil!” below a photo of Twain on the red carpet. Speaking to E! News about her appearance, Twain said she chose a bright red wig because she “needed to have a little bit of a splash of color.”
“So, it puts me in a very celebratory spirit, very optimistic mood,” she told the outlet. “And I think just coming out of this whole COVID phase makes me feel light and bubbly and happy and fun.”
Academy Award-winning actor Jared Leto took the Met Gala theme in a different direction, when he walked the red carpet dressed as a giant cat. The theme this year was Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty to pay homage to designer Karl Lagerfeld, the man behind the modern revival of Chanel.
Leto paid tribute to Lagerfeld in a unique way, choosing to dress up as the designer’s beloved cat, Choupette. Lagerfeld adopted the cat in 2011 after he fell in love with her while pet sitting for a friend. Choupette was present on the red carpet, and Lucas Berullier told the New York Post, “It’s an event in honor of the legacy of Karl, and Choupette is obviously a central part of the legacy.”
When speaking with “The Morning Mash Up” on SiriusXM Hits 1 in November 2023, Leto said he was thinking about skipping the event for the first time in years. He said he’s had so many looks on the Met Gala carpet, he “doesn’t want to mess it up” and thinks he “should [go out on top].”
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“Maybe I should just let somebody else have the invite. But it’s always fun to be invited. It’s always an honor to be invited,” Leto told the outlet. “It is a benefit at the end of the day. It’s great to just go out there and kind of like do something ridiculous.”
Bebe Rexha continued the trend of channeling an animal on the red carpet when she wore a black leather dress with strategically placed cutouts on the back with a horse’s tail attached. She wore her long blonde hair straight, accessorizing the look with dangling earrings, platform heels and bracelets.
During the show, the singer drew attention to the unique feature on the back of her dress, telling the audience to “look at my a–” while introducing Fall Out Boy’s performance.
Prior to the show, Rexha told her followers on TikTok she was nervous to walk the carpet because she was anxious people would be “talking about [her] weight.” She said she wasn’t “feeling so confident” in her body, but later acknowledged “everybody has these days, and nobody ever feels perfect.”
“I’m really not feeling like the bad b—- that I usually am,” she admitted. “I do have an outfit. It is cute. And I do wanna wear my dress. And I do really want to go to celebrate my nomination and my friends’ nominations, but I do feel like anxiety gets the best of me.”
Sam Smith, who uses they/them pronouns, turned heads when they wore an all-black latex suit made by fashion label Harri to the Brit Awards in early 2023. The suit featured pointed shoulders and thighs, with both the sleeves and the pant legs inflated.
Smith completed the look with black heels, black gloves and mismatched earrings, a dangling pearl on their left ear and a diamond stud on their right.
“Sam was having a lot of hate comments recently after ‘Unholy’ about [their] body image,” Harri told Women’s Wear Daily in February 2023. “This is my take on celebrating [their] natural form and the beauty of being one’s self. I wanted to create an image which people have never seen Sam in.”
The singer, who came out as non-binary in 2019, received backlash for the clothes they wore in their music video for “Unholy.” In the video, they wore pearl chains and a cream-colored corset which revealed their nipples. In another scene, they can be seen wearing a showgirl outfit and headdress.