The Most Inappropriate Outfits Dua Lipa Has Ever Worn

Dua Lipa's eye-catching fashion is just as well-known as her earworm disco-pop hits. There isn't a trend that Lipa hasn't worn, from Y2K-inspired throwbacks to sexy athleisure to gothic glam. With the help of her stylist Lorenzo Posocco, with whom the singer has grown up, Lipa has created a wardrobe that combines both up-and-coming designers and established luxury names. Her post-pandemic "Future Nostalgia" tour boasts custom-made costumes from Balenciaga, Versace and Mugler.

While Lipa's fashion has its admirers, it also raises eyebrows. When the singer guest hosted "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in 2020, she quizzed some seniors who had no idea who Dua Lipa was let alone that they were talking to her. When she held up a picture of herself in arguably one of her tamer performance outfits, one elderly lady remarked, "That's terrible. If I had a daughter, I wouldn't want her to go out in that."

While her outfit choices may be seen by some as inappropriate for the occasion or setting, Lipa's one fashion rule is that she doesn't follow rules. "Everyone is allowed to wear whatever the f*** they want, and it's so important that they do," she told Refinery29. "This is the way we move forward in the world. We have to break the norms." Here are some moments when the "New Rules" singer broke the rules of fashion or propriety.

We've all probably had the bad dream where we go out in public only to realize we forgot to wear our pants. For Dua Lipa's 2018 appearance on "The Graham Norton Show" to perform her collaboration with Calvin Harris, "One Kiss," the choice to go pantless was for a fashionable purpose. At first glance, it may seem like she's wearing a monochromatic, bold red pantsuit that's made sexier by the fact that she's not wearing anything underneath her blazer.

However, the real shock factor is that her bottoms are not ankle-crop pants, but tights worn as pants. As pointed out by Teen Vogue, the tights have the characteristic high waist, fully cover her toes, and there is no seam at her ankles. The opaque material and the strategic length of the blazer turn Lipa's getup into something stylish rather than a pantless nightmare come to life. It was one of the season's on-trend outfits by Versace, a brand with which Lipa has enjoyed a continued relationship. She even went back to her model roots by walking the runway for Versace's Spring/Summer 2022 fashion show.

At a 2018 fan signing event for V Magazine, Dua Lipa chose an outfit that can best be described as the dress version of a mullet. From the front, the Marianna Senchina dress seems unassuming — it's in a sweet polka dot print, the hemline goes past her knees, and there are velvet bows decorating the side of the bodice. The only skin exposure seems to be from the fact it's a one-shoulder dress.

When she poses to the side, it's like the mullet's party in the back — only it's along her side. There is a slit that goes all the way to the waist and the aforementioned bows seem to be keeping the dress from being completely open at the side. It's also apparent that she wasn't wearing anything underneath. Lipa took to Instagram to share a photo of her look, prompting a fan to comment: "A slight gust of wind and it would end in tears haha" (via Daily Star).

It might be strange to see this surprisingly conservative Giambittista Valli gown listed as inappropriate, but that's because it didn't fit the occasion. Dua Lipa wore this dress at her first appearance at the American Music Awards in 2018, where she was nominated for New Artist of the Year and Favorite Female Artist – Pop/Rock and performed "One Kiss" and "Electricity" (via Billboard).

The AMAs is known as "the world's largest fan-voted awards show," so the vibe is supposed to be fun. But Lipa's outfit conjures up wedding bells instead. Her red carpet choice earned her a spot on a couple of worst-dressed lists, including USA Today's and the Daily Mail's — with the latter publication stating that her outfit "looked as if it could be a rejected costume from a wedding episode of The Crown" — ouch!

Dua Lipa donned a wildly provocative stage outfit for the 2019 MTV European Music Awards, where she opened the show with "Don't Start Now." As Vogue reported, the singer wore a Mugler bodysuit in which every part of it was sheer or exposed skin except for the long sleeves. The front was made up of a bandeau bra with large cutouts in the chest and abs area. When she turned around, the audience got an eyeful of her back in another cutout and tights that outlined her butt. 

Lipa was joined on stage by dozens of backup dancers who were dressed in yellow leotards. On Instagram, she thanked her stylist, writing, "Thank you [Lorenzo Posocco], my partner in crime ... for making us all look and feel like we just walked out of a Guy Bourdin photograph." Bourdin was a French photographer who was known for his provocative fashion photography and work for French Vogue from 1955 to the '80s.

While the outfit was sexy enough even if she had stood still, her choreography on a chair would leave anybody blushing.

If fans want more of Dua Lipa's fashion beyond red carpet events and performances, they can hop over to her Instagram, where she regularly posts photo dumps of her party and jet-setting outfits. Lipa has loved sharing her fashion ever since she was a teenager — before she was a model-turned-singer, she started a fashion blog called "Dua Daily" as a hobby and maintained it for at least a couple of years, according to The Guardian.

In one of her Instagram photo dumps, Lipa brought back a controversial '90s trend that she would've been too young to experience as a '95er — the exposed thong or the "whale tail' (per Cosmopolitan UK). While on a trip to Mexico with her then-boyfriend, Anwar Hadid, she wore a black Mônot evening dress. The very revealing back had two thin straps and made it appear as if she were wearing a thong underneath; however, the detail was actually part of the dress.

Commenting on Dua Lipa's style, British Vogue wrote that her age group's go-to uniform involves micro skirts, cutouts, and sheer fabric. While non-celebrities probably can't wear these kinds of clothes in their daily lives, a pop superstar like Lipa does ... and then has impromptu photo shoots on the sidewalk, in the middle of the road, and on the side of a building, as she shared on Instagram. Regular folk also probably wouldn't wear so little in the freezing weather of late October London. But again, Lipa isn't regular folk.

As part of this particular fall photoshoot, Lipa took to the streets late at night in a sheer Jean Paul Gaultier Tennis Suit set that exposed her lacy lingerie after attending Caroline Polachek's concert at Islington Assembly Hall, according to W Magazine. In another example of celebrities living in another world, she wore the outfit on the same day that it was available to the public as ready-to-wear, meaning she probably had first dibs on it. 

When one thinks of typical Christmas attire, cozy sweaters, knit scarves, wool mittens, and warm boots may come to mind. If one were to describe the popular Japanese character Hello Kitty, words like "cutesy" and "childlike" may be used. In Dua Lipa's December 2021 Instagram post that she captioned "JOLLY GOOOOOD," Lipa took the usual connotations of Christmas and Hello Kitty and turned them on their heads in her signature sexy way.

In the post, her boots are certainly in the Christmas spirit with their Santa Claus-like colors. Yahoo! News reported that they are the GCDS Moon Boot with faux white fur, red laces, and Hello Kitty patches. While her footwear looks like it'll keep her warm in cold and snowy weather and the Hello Kitty characters add a cute touch, her tiny white Isa Boulder bikini and expanse of tanned skin are more suited for a sandy beach on a scorching summer day.

Dua Lipa broke the number one wedding guest rule by wearing white. And she did this not once but twice. In July 2022, she wore a Bottega Veneta white lace and sequined slip dress to literary agent Olive Ensley's wedding (per PopSugar). The following month, she wore another white gown — this one showed off her white lingerie — to the wedding of fashion designer Simon Porter Jacquemus and his partner, Marco Maestri (per Glamour).

In both cases, Lipa drew controversy for seemingly putting the attention on herself instead of the couples getting married. It was of course the color choice that ruffled feathers more so than the see-through characteristics, which has, quite frankly, become a signature part of Lipa's style. However, context is always important before casting stones.

In the case of Ensley's wedding, Instyle pointed out that the bride didn't wear traditional white. Instead, she wore a fuchsia-colored gown for the ceremony and changed into a bubblegum pink pants suit and bra ensemble for the after-party. For Jacquemus' wedding, Lipa was wearing a dress from the designer's own Fall 2022 ready-to-wear collection (per Glamour). Others in attendance were also wearing white, so the color may have actually been part of the dress code.

In August 2022, Dua Lipa was named the honorary ambassador of Kosovo by President Vjosa Osmani for her work in humanitarian causes and for raising awareness about Kosovo (per Harper's Bazaar). The singer is the daughter of Kosovo Albanian parents, and she took to Instagram to mark the occasion. "It's an honour and a privilege to be able to represent my country all over the world and to continue my work and efforts globally to see that we leave our mark and make a difference," she wrote. "The youth of Kosovo deserves the right to visa liberalization, freedom to travel and to dream big."

As it was a professional setting, one may have expected Lipa to dress similarly to the president of Kosovo, who wrote a fitted and tailored two-piece suit. The singer, however, defied conventions and expectations in this setting as well by wearing a black gown with a slit up to her hip and a dark green oversized blazer.

To celebrate her 27th birthday, Dua Lipa partied in Ibiza and commemorated the week on her Instagram with a series of photo dumps in various outfits and poses. She kicked off the festivities with a Marc Jacobs silver crystal bra that was so tiny that it couldn't even cover the tan lines that she got from wearing her barely-there bikinis and bra tops (per British Vogue). She finished the rest of the look in white with a cropped jacket, a long skirt, and the designer's Mary-Jane mega platforms.

The singer closed off the week in an LBD that was very close to her actual birthday suit. Per InStyle, the label was one of her go-tos, Mugler, and had the sheer and cutout elements that are present in many of her outfits. The upper part was a sheer turtleneck that had star-shaped, opaque panels that strategically covered her chest while the lower part showed off her hips and legs with a cutout and an asymmetrical miniskirt.

While wearing too many trendy things at once may go against the rules of fashion and even look tacky, Dua Lipa is all about being a little too much with her fashion. During an evening outing in London in June 2022, her outfit seemed to incorporate every out-there trend all at once. Her see-through, cropped shirt and matching pants were inlaid with a print of an American hundred-dollar bill, and she matched the green color of the ensemble with her lace-up stiletto boots and shimmery, green eyeshadow. InStyle pointed out her choice of mismatched silver accessories, which included a butterfly chain belt, a necklace with a cowboy boot charm, oversized rings, and a sparkly bag.

Dua Lipa offers no apologies for her fashion choices. "It's an extension of who I am," she told Refinery29. "And even though I'm sometimes more extravagant than others, it's how I express myself." She added, "You're allowed to be whatever you choose to be and whatever you want to put out into the world. And I don't think anybody's really allowed to tell you can and can't wear." Lipa further explained her love of unique fashion, saying, "Occasionally, fashion can make you feel invincible. I don't know if it's ever saved me, but it's felt like a shield at times. I think it's been a tool to finding myself, and expressing myself, in a way that I could never do in words."