43 Scandalous Dresses That Had Tongues Wagging Over the Years

The actress Theda Bara — one of Hollywood's first ever sex symbols and femme fatales — starred in the title role of the 1917 silent film Cleopatra, wearing expensive and racy costumes that included a coiled snake bra that wrapped around her bare breasts. Censors required cuts of scenes that included Bara's "objectionable costume" and "costume exposing body." Sadly, most of the film is now lost because the last remaining prints were destroyed.

Jean Harlow, the original Blonde Bombshell, was hugely popular in 1930s Pre-Code Hollywood and liked to wear really clingy dresses without a bra (the horror!). Here she is with Clark Gable, her co-star in Red Dust.

Rita Hayworth wasn't yet known as the "Love Goddess" when she sat for this alluring image for LIFE magazine in 1941. It became "arguably the single most famous and most frequently reproduced American pinup image ever" (that's according to LIFE, though I'm not going to disagree). She wore a lacy silk negligee — definitely inside clothes back then — and knelt on top of a bed in the photograph by Bob Landry. It was too risqué for the cover, according to someone who worked at LIFE at the time, but it was fine to run inside the magazine. More than 5 million copies of the image ended up in the hands of American troops fighting in World War II.

There's a more famous photo than this from the same party in which Sophia Loren (pictured here on the left) gives Jayne Mansfield the most cutting side eye ever captured. Why the contempt? Mansfield had arrived in a dress that stole the spotlight, which was supposed to be on Loren that night. (The move was a publicity stunt; Mansfield knew that the dress would expose her décolletage.) "Look at the picture," Loren recently told EW. "Where are my eyes? I'm staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. In my face you can see the fear. I'm so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow — BOOM! — and spill all over the table."

When Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, she wore the O.G. naked dress, a skintight column designed by Jean Louis that was covered in 2,500 rhinestones. The designer had to sew it onto the actress, who had specifically requested that the dress make her look "sparkling and naked," according to Hal Rubenstein. "I can now retire from politics after having had 'Happy Birthday' sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way," Kennedy said after he took the stage.

"I've tried just acting, but sex sells at the box office," said the actress Carroll Baker, who wore this Pierre Balmain dress to the U.S. and London premieres of her 1964 film The Carpetbaggers. Pictured here in London outside the Plaza Theatre, Baker shows off the provocative transparent top of the dress. The crowd gathered outside the theater reportedly caused a near riot trying to get a peek.

The future Princess Diana was not yet engaged to Prince Charles when she posed for photos at Young England Kindergarten, where she was a nursery school assistant. She wasn't wearing a slip, and when the sun came out, her backlit skirt showed off her legs in a way that caused a scandal.

Diana — who was only 19 years old at the time — wore a strapless black taffeta gown by Emanuel to her first public outing with Prince Charles. Because it was strapless, Diana was photographed with her décolletage spilling out of the top when she was getting out of her car, and the public went nuts for Daring Di. "We hadn't considered the fact that when Diana bent over — as she would have to do when getting out of the car — she would show quite a lot of cleavage," wrote designer Elizabeth Emanual. "We just thought she looked fabulous."

Carrie Fisher would become a sex symbol after she wore this copper bikini as Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. It has had plenty of critics who say it is sexist, among other things, and "a bit of soft-core porn dropped in the middle of a kids' adventure story." Fisher herself has warned Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley against wearing any similar costumes. "You keep fighting against that slave outfit," Fisher told Ridley.

In 1984, Madonna was an up-and-coming artist and had the opportunity to perform "Like a Virgin" at the MTV Video Music Awards. She was wearing a white bustier top, opera-length lace gloves, and a belt that had the words "boy toy" on it. She writhed around on the floor, possibly flashed the audience, and caused a sensation. Her publicist Liz Rosenberg said, "People came up to me and told me her career was over before it started." People were wrong.

Cher wore this see-through Bob Mackie gown when she attended the Academy Awards in 1988. Before the show, there was much speculation about what she would wear. "You don't need to worry about sedate, Cher likes to whoop it up," Mackie teased. The sequined showgirl number became one of the most memorable Oscar dresses in history.

...and a high slit in the back. It was widely copied at the time and is now considered one of the most iconic red carpet dresses ever.

A 19-year-old Kate Moss wore a silver slip dress by Liza Bruce to an Elite Models party in London in 1993. It remains one of Moss's most famous looks because it was, as the BBC called it, "startlingly sheer." There was no bra involved, just panties. But Moss might not have intended to provoke. "Underwear as outerwear was the mood of the moment," Bruce told the Daily Mail. 'The dress did come out more transparent in the picture (than in reality), which is maybe why she had the confidence to wear it ... It wasn't a come on ... it was just 'this is me.' Her body language was so much like a kid's."

No one knew who Elizabeth Hurley was when she wore a safety pin dress by Versace to accompany then-boyfriend Hugh Grant to the London premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral. By the next day, she was world-famous. Designer Gianni Versace said afterward that Hurley gave the dress all its sexy magic. "Liz has this intelligent face attached to that very naughty body," he said. "So seeing a woman like her in this gown is a guarantee that everyone would go pozzo [nuts]." For her part, Hurley doesn't quite get why the dress has so much power more than 20 years later. The public response to the dress was, for her, "a ludicrous surprise."