Katy Perry was never known for playing it safe with her outfits. She’s a pop star who sucks red carpets like Halloween, couture like a punchline, and theme nights like a personal dare. Most of the time, it’s fun chaos. Sometimes, though, the outfit crosses the line from camp to “Can we not?”
Here are the most inappropriate (or at least most controversial) Katy Perry looks—what they looked like, and why people lost their minds.
1. The Met Gala Chandelier… and the Hamburger Afterparty
The theme for that year’s Met Gala was “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” and Katy Perry took that a bit too literally. She arrived in a Moschino dress that was honestly less of a dress and more of a Halloween costume. It was a literally giant chandelier with glowing candles and dangling crystals. Was it impressive in the sense that she actually wore a lighting fixture? Potentially. But it was also ridiculous, fit more for a very fancy costume party than a Met Gala fashion event, and impractical because she had to ride in the car standing up and couldn’t actually sit down in that outfit.
But Katy Perry went even further and, for the afterparty, showed up in an actual hamburger costume. Which, again, we get the joke that you might want some fast food at the afterparty, but that wasn’t really the time or the place. After all, the Met Gala is an haute couture event, not a kids’ Halloween party.
2. Sesame Street Appearance Deemed Too Inappropriate
In 2010, Katy appeared on Sesame Street and performed a G-rated version of “Hot N Cold” with Elmo, but it was her dress that caused a lot of controversy. She wore a corset-style bright green dress with a plunging neckline, and it was deemed to be too revealing for the show. The creators of Sesame Street tried to defend Katy by saying that their show was always written for both adults and children, so that they could watch the show with parents, and the celebrity guests are there for the parents. But ultimately, the segment with Katy Perry was pulled and only uploaded onto YouTube.
3. The “Hazardous” Spinning Bra
Katy Perry used to have this costume for her performances where she had a bra that looked like two spinning peppermint wheels. It definitely looked fun, but it was kind of dangerous because Katy did get her hair stuck in the mechanism and had to finish performing her song with her head at a weird angle. It didn’t cause any serious injury, but in the end it was deemed it was deemed to be too hazardous and eventually got banned, and the designers said they would try to create a safer version.
4. The Hand Sanitizer Costume During Peak Pandemic
The pandemic was a scary time for everyone, and while humour is a good way to deal with stress, sometimes celebrities went too far or made jokes that were simply tone-deaf. Katy Perry ended up in that situation when she dressed up as a bottle of hand sanitiser for one of the American Idol episodes that were filmed remotely.
Some people thought it was a classic goofy Katy Perry thing to wear. However, most people online were upset and complained that it was tone-deaf and was making light of a very dangerous time.
5. The Geisha Look
When Katy dressed up as a geisha for her American Music Awards performance, she faced heavy criticism and accusations of racism. She tried to defend herself, saying that she dressed up like this to create a beautiful performance and because she loves Japan and thinks it’s the capital of adorableness. That statement in itself was also considered reductive of Japan’s culture.
What Katy failed to understand in that moment was that a love for a certain part of culture doesn’t provide you the right to use it as a costume for a performance. Japan’s geisha history isn’t just a stage prop.
6. The Coronation Look
A coronation isn’t a common event, and it can be quite challenging to dress correctly for such a unique occasion, especially considering it’s not part of your country’s culture and the royals have many strict rules. And Katy Perry almost did it right for once, but the internet did make many memes about the size of her fascinator (which was honestly humongous) and the fact that her pearl necklace made way too much of a statement. But Katy isn’t a stranger to being criticised, so she just said she was happy about the memes and not that bothered.
7. The Met Gala “Art Theft” Incident
Not only was this particular dress not on theme for the Met Gala (the theme was “China: Through the Looking Glass”), but it caused actual legal trouble for Perry and Moschino. So she wore a graffiti-covered dress—what’s the big deal? But it turns out the graffiti on the dress was by a street artist, Rime, and Moschino never asked him whether they could use it in their designs and obviously didn’t compensate the artist for using his art. They even went further and arrived in a graffiti-covered car to the Met Gala and carried around fake spray cans, as if to imply that it was Katy Perry and creative director Jeremy Scott who were the ones to create that graffiti. So naturally, Rime sued Moschino and mentioned Katy Perry in his lawsuit too. And that’s how Katy Perry ended up not only on the worst-dressed list but also accused of art theft.
8. The Sunflower Dress That Got Her Banned in China
In 2015, Katy was performing in Taiwan, and she wore a sunflower dress, which wasn’t that unusual for her. After all, she likes elaborate stage outfits, and sunflowers are featured in her stage shows. But in Taiwan, sunflowers have a political connotation. It has to do with the Sunflower Student Movement that was opposing a trade deal with China.
So while Katy might not have known what she was doing, showing up in that sunflower dress and wrapping herself in Taiwan’s flag during her performance made it look like she was making a political statement and subsequently upset China. What’s even funnier is that when she tried to get a Chinese visa in 2017, she found out she was banned from entering China for a while.
9. The Smurfs Dress
Katy Perry voiced Smurfette in The Smurfs movie, so of course she showed up to the premiere in a themed outfit. A short white dress with Smurfette’s face on it isn’t actually that far from what Smurfette wore in the movie, but some people were outraged that the dress Katy wore was skin-tight and strapless. They said she was hypersexualising a character from a kids’ movie. But for Katy Perry, it was a feminist gesture because she considered Smurfette to be an empowered woman and also because, as a child, her parents banned her from watching The Smurfs.
10. The Dark Horse Music Video
You’d think Katy would learn her lesson when she was criticised for appropriating Japan’s culture, but she did it again in her Dark Horse era. In the music video, she shows up dressed like a version of Cleopatra. On top of that, many people got upset because it appears that everyone who’s playing her servant in the video has a darker skin tone, and that could be interpreted as weaponizing slave narratives.
When talking about this in a Rolling Stone interview, Katy tried to defend herself, saying, “Can’t you appreciate a culture?” and concluded that she’ll just stick to baseball and hot dogs to be safe.