Celebrities seem to have magical powers when it comes to what they choose to wear. They possess this bizarre ability to make things look amazing when there’s no way anybody else would be able to pull them off! Out of context, some of the clothes they wear are so unfortunate that we wouldn’t even stop to notice them on the rack unless it was to gawk. The makeup looks they go for can be bold and daring, and their wigs often venture far beyond the boundaries of natural-looking hair. These things always look phenomenal on said celebrities, while we shudder to think the reaction we’d get if we showed up to a social event in lingerie and track pant, a catsuit with almost the entire bodice cut out or candy-pink hair. Here are 15 looks that appear amazing on the stars! But nobody else would have a hope of pulling off!
15 Jennifer Lopez’s Yellow Lipstick
Yellow is a tough color to get right under any circumstances. Its brightness will wash out or clash with people who are too fair, and the intensity of it means that if it looks wrong, people will definitely notice. There are also enough shades of yellow to confuse anybody, so we try to stay clear of the sunny color! Yellow lips are a whole other level of tricky to pull off, but Jenny from the Block does it perfectly in her music video for "Live It Up." The yellow brings out the golden tones in her skin and her hair which make her look even better (which always seems impossible for J.Lo, we know!). She also matches it with a pale orange bathing suit, golden jewelry, and yellow nails, and the result is fabulous. We, on the other hand, wouldn’t be caught dead in this look, especially at the beach!
14 Adele’s Floral Dresses
Floral dresses have actually made a comeback in recent fashion trends, but we’re still convinced that nobody could pull one off like Adele can. She’s a fan of the look, wearing a now famous Dolce & Gabbana floral gown in her "Send My Love" video, and a red Valentino floral dress to the Grammys in 2013. We’ve seen others wearing similar dresses, including models on the runway, and we’re yet to see somebody who makes them look good as our gal Adele! It’s just her thing now. Floral dresses have a tendency to be busy and in-your-face, but Adele totally manages to work past all of that every single time. It must have something to do with her overall sophisticated vibe -- the winged liner, and classic Hollywood blonde hair. Plus, they match her brilliant personality. Others might be able to wear floral and not look hideous, but they won’t look as good as Adele!
13 Katy Perry’s Cleopatra Costume
Yes, we know this is a costume. Katy Perry dressed up to resemble some sort of Cleopatra-like figure in her Egyptian-inspired music video for "Dark Horse", but she made the costume look so good that for a moment there, we actually dreamed of wearing it to our next party! We love all the looks in the music video, but our favorite has to be the vibrant dress she wears as she sits on the throne. The fitted, colorful bodice of the dress does wonders for her figure, and then the sheer skirt is essentially all that dreams are made of. She also rocks the makeup of the gods (literally) and a heart-shaped headpiece. It sounds crazy, but this all looks so good on her that we almost convinced ourselves that it would be appropriate to copy the look for regular old functions. Of course, it would not. Even at a costume party, we couldn’t look as spectacular as this!
12 Britney Spears’ Pink Underwear
Here we have another music video costume that actually ended up looking pretty hot. In Britney Spears’ music video for "I’m A Slave 4 U", she wears black leather pants with a pink pair of either underwear or bikini bottoms on the outside. In theory, this sounds like the tackiest thing ever, but miraculously, Britney still comes off looking hot in the video. She pairs the panties with a matching pink crop top. Other factors that we think make the look work include her toned, bared tummy in all its muscly glory and her standard Britney choreography that still has viewers watching to this day. This isn’t necessarily a look that we’re interested in trying to replicate, because unlike the Cleopatra getup, we don’t for one second think we could pull it off. Could you even imagine? But if anybody can make underwear on top of pants look good, it’s Britney Spears!
11 Lady Gaga’s Versace Dress
Where do we even begin with this Gaga dress?! To the Grammys in 2012, Lady Gaga rocked this Versace gown down the red carpet. The dress featured a tight neck piece, a pattern that looked like it was designed by Michelangelo, and a frilly skirt that contained the royal colors of red, green, and gold and mesh underpadding. She wore this with snakeskin armadillo shoes (another look which you have to be Lady Gaga to wear) and a headpiece featuring gold feathers sprouting out from her hair’s part. Just in case all this wasn’t attention-grabbing enough, Gaga wore a grey-lavender wig with blue ends. But do you know what? She looked sensational! Considering the dress, the hair, and the shoes, this is a look that you’d never be able to wear anywhere except a red carpet (and you’d get looks of disapproval, even if you did), but Gaga managed to be one of the best-dressed artists there!
10 Justin Timberlake’s All-White Suit
Justin Timberlake is clearly a fan of the all-white suit. He’s actually worn it so often that he was immortalized in it in wax-figure form at Madame Tussaud’s. Justin makes the all-white suit look so good that guys might be fooled into thinking they can pull off the look too, but in most cases, they’d be wrong! All-white suits are generally very Vegas magician, and very 1980s. We’re not exactly sure why this comes off looking amazing on JT—could it be because he’s the guy who brought sexy back? He was in a former boy-band so anything he does is cool by default? Or maybe because he was just born to rock a suit and tie, no matter the color (see what we did there?). JT’s had some fashion mishaps in the past, but the white suit is definitely his thing now. While other guys might come off looking funny, he looks irresistible.
9 Nicki Minaj’s Wigs
As her career has advanced, Nicki Minaj has begun to wear much more natural-looking hair (and look fantastic in it!). But when she first burst onto the scene, she was all about wigs that were out there, to say the least. This was around 2011 and 2012, when the world was used to Gaga’s shocking antics and wearing outlandish looks was like a rite of passage to some artists. But having said that, Nicki still came up with some absolutely unique looks that would be laughable on others. And she looked smoking hot in them. Work that one out! She did the leopard-print wig to match the leopard-print dress, the multicolored wig, the candy-colored pink and purple wigs, the green wigs, and the symmetrical strawberry-and-cream wig complete with bangs. She basically became synonymous with wigs, and while we wouldn’t have a hope of looking good in them, she looked amazing every time!
8 Carrie Bradshaw’s Market Outfit
Toward the end of the Sex and the City series, and definitely by the two subsequent movies, the focus of the story about Carrie Bradshaw and her friends had shifted from men to fashion. After Carrie marries Big in the second movie, she’s dressed for a runway in every scene. Not that we’re complaining! While most of her looks are a source of inspiration for us, some of them would just look ridiculous on the average person who isn’t Carrie Bradshaw, despite looking phenomenal on her. When Carrie visits the souk market in Abu Dhabi, she wears an outfit that is so not what we were thinking when it comes to vacation-friendly clothes. Heels, huge puffy purple satin skirt, and tight black top. We wouldn’t even think of putting that look together for a fashion show, let alone when you need to think about staying safe in a foreign country. Gosh!
7 Beyoncé’s Crown Braid
When you think about it, there are probably a lot of things that look fabulous on Beyoncé and would look terrible on everybody else. The look that comes to mind, probably because it’s so recent, is her hairstyle in the "Formation" music video. Now, there isn’t a moment in that video when she doesn’t look amazing, but would regular people be able to look amazing under the same circumstances? Probably not. Our favorite scene in the video is when B’s dancing in the house in the blood-red bodysuit—she looks so good that it almost didn’t occur to us that those crown braids would make anybody else look like a milkmaid. Well, we secretly got a YouTube tutorial up and did a crown braid on ourselves, and the result was total milkmaid. And Beyoncé looks to-die-for in the same hairstyle! A few other celebrities rock this, but B has our vote for best crown braid.
6 Ariana Grande’s Cat Ears
You would not think that a grown woman could wear animal ears on any night but Halloween and be taken seriously. Lo and behold, Ariana Grande is a huge fan of the cat ears, and still manages to look like a boss. How does that happen? She wears them on stage, in photo shoots, in music videos, and just out and about in general, and they totally work with the rest of her look. Not only would we not be taken seriously if we turned up to any event in our lives wearing a headband with cat ears on it, but we’d probably get laughed at. Maybe that means that the people in our lives are just judgmental, but we have a feeling that this is another example of the celebrity super-ability to make unsavory looks work. Ariana’s endless flowing locks also probably have something to do with making the ears look amazing!
5 Rihanna’s Hair
Rihanna’s worn so many hairstyles in the past that it’s actually difficult to remember them all. But if you do a quick google search of all her past styles, it’s pretty clear that the general population wouldn’t be able to wear half of them without looking shocking. Rihanna was one of the first pop icons to introduce us to the half-shaved look and the female mohawk, and though many others have since replicated these styles, we still don’t think anybody can do them the way Riri can. It’s like she was born to rock edgy fashion that nobody else could dream of rocking! She also reintroduced us to the female mullet, or fullet, and weirdly made the shorn look with its own long, wispy tail look good. Rihanna’s also done pixie hair, which few people can pull off, and baby pink pixie hair, which nobody can pull off. Somebody give this woman a medal!
4 Kim Kardashian’s Lingerie And Adidas
We know that the sheer, see-through leotards and dresses paired with tracksuit jackets and pants are kind of on-trend right now, but nobody can do this like Kim Kardashian can. If you’d told us a few years ago that wearing lingerie out was going to be acceptable, and that wearing it under tracksuit garments was going to make it even better, we wouldn’t have believed you. In theory this is ugly, and yet Kim has made it look so good that girls everywhere are following suit. Now, we’re sure that this is one of those trends that people are going to look back on and die of embarrassment over, because in essence, it’s horrible. But at the moment it’s in, and we’re pretty confident that Kim looking so good in something so illogical led to its popularity. You have to hand it to her—the girl could make a potato sack the next big thing.
3 Every Hairstyle On 'Game Of Thrones'
Is it just us, or does watching Game of Thrones make you want to twist your hair into all sorts of crazy braids? The female characters on the show wear some of the most intricate hairstyles we’ve ever seen, and although you can’t quite wrap your head around some of them at first, by the end of the episode you’re seriously tempted to try those styles on yourself. And as expected, they look totally ridiculous in the real world! On the show though, they seem like they’d fit right in with your modern lifestyle. Whether it’s Cersei’s random loose curls, Sansa’s lady-of-the-court up-styles or Dany’s crazy braids that you’d never be able to do anyway, even if they did look good, these styles all seem like great ideas! We’ve never seen silver hair look so appealing. Outside a medieval and fantastical setting though, they’re not as hot and much more hilarious.
2 Nicole Scherzinger’s Catsuit
We knew that Nicole Scherzinger can basically wear anything she wants when she stepped out with the Pussycat Dolls in 2005. The group wore all kinds of skimpy outfits that none of us could ever wear, and managed to look totally enviable. Nicole in particular is famous for rocking catsuits that would cut into the regular woman in all the wrong ways, and she wore one recently to the Brit Fashion Awards in 2016. Take all the time you want to stare in awe—she looks too good to be real! And yet somehow, we feel like there would be a completely different vibe if we were to wear this sheer catsuit. The word toned doesn’t even do justice to Nicole’s bod, for which she works super-hard in the gym and deserves all the praise she gets! She totally slayed in this outfit, which would have been a disaster on just about anybody else.
1 Rihanna’s See-Through Dress
Of course Rihanna’s going to be at the top of this list—the girl’s just too daring and too flawless to not appear at least two times! Our number one Rihanna look that nobody else could pull off to the same effect would have to be the see-through gown she wore to the CFDA Awards in 2014. Let’s be honest—she was basically naked with crystals and fur. She was criticized for the custom-made fishnet gown, which didn’t cover anything at all, but whatever your thoughts may be on the whole see-through thing, she looks good. Damn good, in fact! The sheer, body-parts-exposed look is in now, but few people go all the way with it. Most chuck a bra on underneath or at least have their bits covered with the material of the dress, but Rihanna isn’t interested in your conservative ways. And frankly, she doesn’t need to be. This is one look she aced!
