By Leah Dolan, CNN

(CNN) — Does bad taste make for good fashion? At the 2026 Grammy Awards, several celebrities opted for clothes that were a little odd and a little ugly. Arguably they were also the most memorable.

Amid some of the more conventionally tasteful outfits — see Hailey Bieber in a black strapless Aläia dress, or Madison Beer dolled up in an Andrew Kwon gown — an abundance of head-scratching looks kept us glued to the event.

Cher on stage in a leather and lace look, with a shredded leather skirt that gave the distinct impression it was falling down. Amy Taylor, frontwoman of Australian pub rock band Amyl and the Sniffers, wore a flesh-toned catsuit with hot pink lace cut-outs, overlaid with a fluffy pink bolero and a cascading floor-length fringe. Jon Batiste in an entirely rhinestone military jacket. That’s without mentioning the red carpet mainstays: Chappell Roan in a custom Mugler nipple-clasped dress, a remake of the original salacious dress from 1998, reissued with prosthetic areolas; Bad Bunny in Schiaparelli’s first ever custom menswear look — a velvet tuxedo with plunging lapels and a kinky, corset lace-up that ran along his entire back; Lola Young in a sweater and tracksuit pants from Vivienne Westwood, smartened up with a stripey tie; while Shaboozey fully committed to an outfit of wacky halves: a Ralph Lauren tuxedo jacket and vest paired with belted jeans, also by the brand.

While the definition of bad taste is subjective, it doesn’t always have to be as ostentatious as Batiste’s rhinestones, or Roan’s nipple-hanging gown. Billie Eilish, wearing the niche Swedish brand Hodakova, tested the boundaries of judgment with an outfit that was deliberately frumpy. Eilish’s jacket and skirt were made from reworked men’s trousers, with every original pocket, belt loop and seam from the pant’s previous form made visible in the new look. Her long white socks fell just below the knee, making her sock suspenders — the eternally unflattering male equivalent to the much-fetishized female stocking suspenders — redundant. From the perspective of looking beautiful in the conventional Valentino Garavani way, Eilish’s outfit was ineffectively “wrong.” But there was something deeply engrossing about it — the abundance of useless straps, the socks and pointed stilettos, the 1950s British grandma coin purse — that made you want to look more closely.

“Ugly is attractive, ugly is exciting. Maybe because it is newer,” Prada told T Magazine in 2013. “The investigation of ugliness is, to me, more interesting than the bourgeois idea of beauty. And why? Because ugly is human. It touches the bad and the dirty side of people.” On the runways for both Prada and Miu Miu, the designer has made a point of challenging our sartorial prejudices in the name of newness. Prada’s Spring-Summer 1996 collection “Banal Eccentricity” (famously dubbed as “Ugly Chic”) used patterns typically found on 1950s curtains and table clothes and made them into dowdy knee-length shirts, polo-shirts and dresses modelled with chunky sandals. Over twenty years later, Prada has continued with her distinct, often paradoxical approach that challenges conventional beauty. Why?

Like reading a long and difficult book, we only grow from what challenges us. Prada understands that, as do designers like Jean Paul Gaultier, Demna and Marc Jacobs. Uncomfortable things spark conversation, require more attention, ask you to look and linger for longer — all potential indicators of value. In reality, bad taste has always been good for the fashion business. The industry hinges on novelty in order to survive, and requires a constant roster of revolving ideas that might entice customers to update their wardrobes and reinvent themselves in new ways. Ugliness therefore can be a never ending wellspring of inspiration for designers.

We like what we know — which is why what we often consider to be good is merely a reflection of the current trend cycle, or a garment so timeless it feels constantly in alignment with the present. Arguably, something deemed as bad taste may simply be ahead of its time. Shapes, silhouettes and ideas seem wrong until suddenly one day, they look right.

“Bad taste is what entertainment is all about,” wrote “Hairspray” and “Cry-Baby” film director John Waters in “Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste,” first published in 1981. “To understand bad taste one must have very good taste,” he said. There is something rebellious too in the pursuit of strange clothes. It refuses a repetitive definition of beauty fed to us via algorithms. In today’s mass produced, digitally curated world, it takes much more work to look a little weird.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.