OPINION: Genuine question... does fashion hate women?

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At the Fifth Annual Academy Gala on Sunday night, the A-list took to the red carpet in their most glamorous gowns and tuxedos, many plucked straight off the runway at Paris Fashion Week.

Kim Kardashian was there, allegedly, but for all we know, she chose to take the night off and send a body double in her place.

She didn't, of course, because Kim's commitment to fashion — to pulling off a look — is second to none.

Watch: Would you rather be overdressed or underdressed? Our fashion experts disagree. Post continues below.

There was the time she followed a strict diet by her own admission to fit into Marilyn Monroe's dress for the Met Gala, or the time Balenciaga wrapped her face and body in black jersey to make a point about her iconic silhouette.

But her latest look was perhaps her most subversive — and high-fashion — to date.

Kardashian's nude Maison Margiela dress came with a matching head covering, giving the rather disturbing look of being smothered with fabric, and trapped that way thanks to a diamond collar necklace secured around her throat.

Her ribcage was cinched into an unnatural shape by a hidden corset, adding to the claustrophobic effect.

Kim Kardashian wears a look from the Maison Margiela Artisanal 2025 Collection to the Academy Gala in Los Angeles. Images: Instagram/@maisonmargiela; Getty.

The outfit was from the first Couture collection for the avant-garde brand by new designer Glenn Martens, in which the models' faces were covered with textiles made of plastic, lace and metal.

It received rapturous critical acclaim.

In September, Martens presented his debut Ready-to-Wear range with an equally unnerving styling technique: metal devices that forced the models' mouths open.

A live children's orchestra accompanied the show.

A look from the Maison Margiela Artisanal 2025 Collection, and the Spring-Summer Ready-to-Wear show where models' mouths were forced open with metal guards. Images: Instagram/@maisonmargiela; Getty.

Both stunts have ignited a conversation in the industry around whether designers actually know, or more to the point care, what women want to wear.

Is this the height of fashion? And if so, why does fashion want women to look like they're being bound, smothered or gagged?

At the close of Paris Fashion Week, New York Times fashion director and chief critic Vanessa Friedman published an article titled, "Why can't fashion see what it does to women?"

Reflecting on a season that "introduced clothes that hid, confined, muzzled or even erased the women beneath," her piece proposed that beyond the glaring question of practicality, there's the one about what these "offputting, sometimes cruel designs" are meant to signal.

"There were styles that suggested suffering and entrapment were the cost of participation," she wrote, perhaps alluding to a new silhouette introduced at Alaïa that bound the wearer's arms like a straitjacket.

Looks from the Alaïa runway show in Paris. Images: Instagram/@maisonalaia.

Business Of Fashion editors Diana Pearl and Cathaleen Chen discussed the design in a piece for the publication, sharing a similar sentiment to Friedman's.

"Over the top runway looks are usually watered down by the time they hit stores," they wrote.

"But even if Alaïa never sells a single armless dress, the garment and other stunts from the past month have reignited the discourse of how the people who create fashion really feel about their mostly female customers."

In the fleeting social media landscape, designers are under increasing pressure to create sharable moments. This season was high on runway stunts, with women's bodies the tool for execution.

One particularly controversial look at Jean Paul Gaultier presented a model in a full bodysuit printed with the image of a naked male body.

At McQueen, "bumster" jeans put half of the models' bottoms on display.

And at Courrèges, the first five looks shown included face veils that were attached to caps and tucked into waistbands. Designer Nicolas Di Felice said they were made to act as "functional UV blockers."

The Jean Paul Gaultier bodysuit, and McQueen's "bumster" jeans. Images: Instagram/@jeanpaulgaultier; @alexandermcqueen.

What these outfits all have in common, apart from being objectively unwearable, is that they were designed by men at the helm of fashion houses.

Meanwhile, at Miu Miu, which remains fashion's leading brand according to the Lyst Index, the big proposition of the season was aprons — lots of them.

Designer Miuccia Prada used her runway show to reference the invisible domestic labour performed by women in the background of society, and translate that into fashion.

"To me the apron contains the real difficult life of women in history, from factories to the home," she told Vogue.

When the world's most influential female designer creates clothes for women, she puts us in… aprons.

To add insult to injury, the spring-summer 2026 season seemed to set the dial back on size inclusivity, and lacked any meaningful representation of women of different body shapes.

The message? We can muzzle them, mutilate them and make fun of them — but we cannot show women's bodies as they are.

Feature image: Getty.