No nipples were damaged for this dress. It would have been a good disclaimer for the dress that singer Chappell Roan wore on the red carpet at the Grammys on Sunday night. Because although Thierry Mugler’s original dress did indeed have nipple piercings and there were therefore concerns about the safety of Roan’s nipples, the singer, unlike the original model, wears a prosthesis – and so the photos are still on the usually very prudish Instagram.
The original dress was designed by Mugler in 1998 for the Belgian model Erica VanBriel. “I had my nipples pierced and the news spread like wildfire,” she said in a 2023 interview with website Byline. “Before I knew it, Thierry said: ‘I have a dress for you and I’m going to hang it on your nipples’.” He made the dress in black muslin, a very light fabric. “He knew it had to be extremely light material because he had nipple piercings himself.”
The dress was designed in such a way that most of the fabric hangs on the hips and therefore does not pull on the nipples themselves. But the substance turned out not to be the problem. It was “funny,” says VanBriel, because not everyone knew the dress was on her nipples. The dress was pulled, there was even a model who stood on the train just before she had to go on. It hurt a little, but “I think I have pretty firm nipples, so it was fine,” she recalls.
These are fears that Roan has not had to experience. “They are prosthetics, don’t take them away!” writes her stylist Genesis Webb with photos she posts on Instagram of Roan on the red carpet. Instagram is particularly squeamish when it comes to female nipples and removes images that show them. But apparently, thanks to the prosthesis, she has no nipples – only piercings.
It is thanks to make-up artist Sasha Glasser – who also drew fake tattoos on Roan’s body for the Grammys – that it is barely visible where her skin merges into the prosthesis in which the painless piercings are placed.
It’s a daring look, but is it daring if it’s fake? It is a pity that designer Thierry Mugler, who died in 2022 at the age of 73, cannot reflect on this himself. VanBriel remembers what it was like when she stepped onto the catwalk in her real nipple piercing dress. “I remember well how quiet it was, it was serene,” she says in the interview. “And I remember thinking ‘my goodness, here I am walking with my bare breasts’.”
But, she says: “On the other hand: it’s Mugler, it’s sexy, it’s hot, it’s daring, it’s out there.” Exactly what Roan actually wasn’t on the red carpet, not really.
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