The New Trend in 'Naked Dressing'

It has been 55 years since Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday Mr President" to John F. Kennedy wearing a sheer Jean Louis dress, hand-embellished with 2,500 crystals, but her look is as relevant and influential as ever.

Earlier this week, reality star Kim Kardashian-West became the latest celebrity to wear Gucci's new season mesh bodysuit posing in a photoshoot and Snapchat posts as she promoted her new makeup line to her millions of followers, reports The Telegraph. Back in April, Rihanna wore a slightly more demure incarnation of the same look, layered under denim shorts and a vest top at the Coachella festival.

Wearing nothing but sparkle is nothing new, but for stars hoping to shine on the now overly-saturated red carpet or on crowded social media feeds, returning to a 'dazzle 'em' approach is considered a fail-safe - especially for anyone with hopes of dominating on the internet the following morning.

Arguably, one's filter adjusts to the quantity of flesh and sequins now floating around in the ether, and it takes a lot more to shock us in the fashion stakes now than it did even a year ago.

That said, when Gucci debuted said bodysuit on the catwalk in February, the interests of celebrity stylists were evidently piqued. Complete with what looked like a knight's chainmail coif redesigned for a rave, the brand's showman designer, Alessandro Michele's, interpretation was Instagram bait too tasty to ignore.

Kardashian-West and Rihanna have both been savvy in adopting the most-talked-about piece from Gucci's Milan Fashion Week show, and styling it their own way. For Rihanna, that was about making it festival-ready. Kardashian-West, meanwhile, has previously cited Cher as a muse and, right down to the poker straight, long black hair that she now sports, her interpretation mirrors designer Bob Mackie's work in the Seventies and Eighties. "When Cher came along she wasn't used to wearing anything glitzy but the minute I put anything like that on her, she perked up and became this amazing star," Mackie told The Telegraph earlier this year.

"People would tune in to see what she would wear. She was a beautiful young girl, she was one of the first girls to look that way; with her bell bottom flares, long, straight hair parted in the middle." Mackie, arguably, is the one responsible for the entire category of 'naked dresses'- and bodysuits that has emerged- he also had a hand, as Jean Louis's sketch designer, in creating that original dress for Monroe. From Jennifer Lopez in Versace, to Beyoncé in Givenchy, extrapolations and reinterpretations of his work have been coming thick (well, thin) and fast in the last few years. His view? Quite simply, "everything comes back.”