14 Times Celebs Couldn’t Or Didn't Want To Find A Designer To Dress Them, So They Said, “Fine, I’ll Do It Myself”

BRB, searching the Real Real for Rachel Bloom's Gucci gown. ✨

Typically, the outfits celebrities wear to red carpets are borrowed or gifted from the designers who created them. However, for the celebs who aren't in line with a designer's narrow idea of beauty standards or considered "famous enough," finding a designer to dress them can be difficult. So, they get creative and source their own ensembles.

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Here are 14 times celebrities bought their own red carpet outfits:

1. Rachel Bloom bought her own Gucci dress for the 2017 Emmys because she was "at the place where [she] can afford it," and she planned to resell it on the Real Real afterward.

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"I bought this dress because Gucci's not lending me a dress," she told E!

2. Tiffany Haddish spent $4,000 on an Alexander McQueen dress for the Girls Trip premiere, and she's reworn it multiple times "to get [her] money's worth."

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She's worn it to the MTV Movie Awards, Academy Awards, hosting Saturday Night Live, and in People's Most Beautiful Issue. 

3. When Megan Mullally hosted the 2019 SAG Awards, she couldn't find a designer to dress her, so she ordered her own Alexander McQueen gown online.

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She told Access Hollywood, "I always pick out clothes online and buy my own stuff because, first of all, I like it because I can just wear what I want to wear, but also the major designers are not interested in sending me any dresses."

4. Hayden Panettiere was determined to wear Tom Ford to the 2014 Golden Globes, so when he refused to lend her a gown because he only wanted to dress one woman for the event, she decided to buy her own.

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She faced a lot of criticism for her decision, but Tom Ford himself put any negative rumors to rest by sending her a huge bouquet of roses and a kind note.

5. Edie Falco walked into Jeffrey on West 14th Street, talked to her personal shopper, and bought her own Lanvin gown for the 2014 Golden Globes.

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She told the Hollywood Reporter, "Why not? It’s the least I can do.”

6. When Gabourey Sidibe was gearing up for her first major red carpet event, no designers offered to dress her because they decided she was "too fat," so she bought her own affordable black dress from Torrid.

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She told Teen Vogue, "Even though we are moving towards more visibility for plus-size people, there is a lot [of] pushback. So it’s important to keep fighting [and] to keep being visible until the conversation changes and [it] is no longer about our bodies because I'm not my body. I'm a whole person."

7. Melissa McCarthy designed her own dress for the 2016 Golden Globes in collaboration with creative director Judy Swartz and fit specialist Daniela Kurrle.

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She told Vogue, “I’ve always been obsessed with the drape and sex appeal of certain 1970s dresses. The second we saw that metallic panne velvet, we all thought kimono dress.”

8. A lot of Destiny's Child's outfits were created by Beyoncé's mom because high-end labels "didn’t really want to dress four Black, country, curvy girls."

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When the band started to get big, the label told Tina Knowles-Lawson that the girls "should look like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera" in order to maintain crossover appeal. 

She told W Magazine, "We stuck to our guns and it paid off, because then people started loving the outfits and waiting to see what they had on. But I took a lot of heat for them being different and unique and for pulling from Black culture.”

9. For the 2012 Golden Globes, Madonna chose a Reem Acra dress off the rack.

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She won the award for Best Song in a Motion Picture for "Masterpiece" in W.E.

10. Bryce Dallas Howard likes "having lots of options for a size 6 as opposed to maybe one option," so she went to Neiman Marcus and bought a Jenny Packham gown she loved for the 2016 Golden Globes.

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She told People, "I always go to department stores for this kind of stuff.”

11. Before the 21st Critics' Choice Awards, she went online shopping and picked out a Pierre Balmain dress from Forward by Elyse Walker, which cost $1,300.

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She told People, "When you’re not ‘sample’ size, or when you don’t have a direct relationship with a designer, or if you don’t have a lot of notice, those types of size 6 dresses just aren’t that available that much. … So, what I found is that if something is sort of last-minute, or I don’t have a good relationship with a place, then I go to Neiman’s, or I get something online.”

12. And for the 22nd Critics' Choice Awards, Bryce wore a dress she bought from Topshop for $240.

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In her own words, her personal style is "if Carolyn Bessette met Kim Kardashian."

13. When Jane Fonda won an Oscar in 1972, she wore an off-the-rack pantsuit from Yves Saint Laurent.

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She wore it to make a statement because the Vietnam War was still being fought, and she didn't feel like it was an appropriate time to be wearing showy clothes. 

14. And finally, at the 2020 Academy Awards, she wore an Elie Saab gown she previously wore to Cannes in 2014 and a coat she bought on sale in 2019, which she said would be the "last article of clothing [she] will ever buy."

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The coat became a symbol of her environmental activism when she wore it to climate protests in 2019, which she called Fire Drill Fridays. 

At one of the protests, she told the crowd, "When I talk to people about, ‘We don’t really need to keep shopping. We shouldn’t look to shopping for our identity. We don’t need more stuff,’ then I have to walk the walk too."