30 Times Dresses Looked So Bad, They Deserved To Be Shamed On This Facebook Group

I reached out to Mary Waldron, the founder of the fabulous Facebook group, to learn more about the community, its rise to fame, and where the line between a good and a bad dress lies.

"I noticed the group gaining more popularity about 6-7 months after I created it, and it was honestly out of nowhere. I never expected it to be such a big group, but honestly, I should have because at the time, shaming groups were a big trend on Facebook," she told Bored Panda. "Looking back, I think the thing about shaming groups in general that brings people together and really resonates with them is the idea that there are things so bad out there that they feel compelled to share them with everyone for a good laugh, just like when a group of kids in school will see a teacher with a really bad tie and make a few jokes. To me, it’s that same concept, just on a much larger scale, that really makes these groups what they are."

Mary, who founded 'You can’t just slap some fabric together and call it a dress,' explained to me what the inspiration for such an interesting and unusual Facebook group name was.

"The group name was actually inspired by a comment on a post in the group, ‘That’s it, I’m wedding dress shaming,’" she said she wishes she could remember the name of the person who'd made that particular comment, as she'd love to credit them.

"The group was originally just a wedding dress shaming group called ‘You Can’t Slap On A White Skirt and Call it a Wedding Dress,' but over time, as more and more people joined, I decided to allow other types of dresses. The name change was actually only a few months ago, after we had already become popular and I had a larger admin team, and we mutually decided that since we were allowing all types of dresses, we needed a more inclusive name," she walked Bored Panda through the changes that happened within the group as it grew ever more popular.

In Mary's opinion, a dress is "really bad" when it's completely and utterly impractical. "The dresses I tend to really gawk at are the ones that look like they could fall off, tear, or just completely malfunction at any given moment. But outside of the group, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to fashion because a person’s taste is as unique as their own."

Mary added that what's most important is how you personally feel when you wear whatever dress you've picked out. "At the end of the day, if a dress makes you feel happy when you wear it, then you wear it relentlessly because your body is your own to dress how you want to."

The Facebook group has nearly 60k members and notes that they only shame dresses. Shaming people or bodies is absolutely not okay. “Hate isn’t welcomed,” the moderators and administrators of the group note, adding that all faces and identifying info should be covered up.

They also note that people shouldn’t get angry if people make fun of a dress that they’d worn sometime in the past. “Stop being so soft,” they note. What’s more, the group doesn’t tolerate any politics or any pretty dresses either.

Being stylish isn’t as easy as picking out some random items from your local thrift store and throwing them on. Sure, confidence plays an important role (and we’re all for buying secondhand clothes to protect the environment), but an item of clothing has to be able to stand on its own two metaphorical feet.

Fashion designer Oyinda Akinfenwa, the creator of the Janore brand, is an expert in making multifunctional dresses that can be worn in a wide variety of ways. In a previous interview with Bored Panda, she told me all about the mistakes that designers tend to make. A lack of good materials and creative blocks can affect the final quality of the product. Designers really do have it tough!

"It’s hard to notice your own mistakes on your outfits until someone points them out because to you, it seems amazing because it is your work and you want to be proud of it, without realizing it may not be exactly as good as you think," Oyinda, from Nigeria, told Bored Panda.

"It’s really hard for creatives to give themselves criticism most times because of how hard we work to create the pieces we have, so most times we tend to not try to over-analyze the result,” she said.