No One Really Wears This Stuff

For everyone who’s ever looked at runway fashions and wondered, “Would anybody really wear that?” Claire Suddath has the answer: No. New York Fashion Week's over-the-top designs, from clothes befitting a 19th-century French prostitute to “outfits that literally have no armholes” are “a form of wearable artwork,” she writes in Time, and they’re more about making a statement—and generating buzz—than anything else.

Basically, fashion designers shell out upwards of $40,000 “to show off clothing they don't expect anyone to buy,” she continues, noting that the themes behind the wacky designs are “later translated into more wearable items.” Which isn’t to say no one wears the more bizarre versions: Madonna showed up at the Met costume gala wearing a pair of Louis Vuitton bunny ears, and she “looked like a rabbit with sculpted biceps.”