Remember when pro-wrestler Chyna flipped the script on red carpet fashion?
Tanya Fevzi
(CNN) — Remember when professional wrestler Joan Marie Laurer — better known by her ring name, Chyna — walked the Emmy Awards red carpet in a dress that looked more SmackDown than starlet?
It was 1999, the height of popularity for World Wrestling Entertainment (then known as the WWF). Driven by big personalities like The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, pro-wrestling’s TV ratings were regularly surpassing mainstream sports, including even the NBA playoffs. The Simpsons had already aired an episode featuring Hall of Famer Bret “Hitman” Hart, and a year later the first video game in a major franchise — WWF SmackDown! — would have its inception.
In a sea of more traditionally glitzy looks, Laurer arrived at the Emmys in a leather rhinestone-studded dress cut in all the right places to show off her extraordinary muscular frame.
It was a red carpet variation of the costumes Laurer often wore in the ring. In particular, another studded two-piece she had performed in a month earlier at the 1999 SummerSlam — though this time she swapped out her wrestling gloves for a little black purse and her fighting boots for square-toed, heeled mules. With her hair coiled into soft bouncy waves, smoky eyeshadow and diamond studded earrings, Laurer was the picture of unconventional femininity.
Not to mention her camera pose of choice that night: a bicep flex. Laurer’s stacked physique and high muscle mass was unusual amid the ‘90s waifish trend. Looking back now, at a time when GLP-1s are shrinking female celebrity bodies, the look still feels radical. “People would ask if I was a feminist, and women would say that I would show that women can be strong,” Laurer told Wrestling Inc in 2015. But Laurer was also bullied about her appearance, such as in a 2013 episode of E!’s “Fashion Police” where pro-wrestler Nikki Bella and host Joan Rivers questioned her gender — something Bella later apologized for.
Before her untimely death in 2016, Laurer racked up a series of record-breaking professional accolades. In 1999, she became the first woman to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship and the first woman to enter the traditionally male Royal Rumble match — which sees wrestlers eliminate opponents by throwing them over the top rope so that both feet touch the floor. Laurer was also the only WWF Women’s Champion to end her reign without losing the title in a match. (The World Wrestling Federation, or WWF, changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002.)
Throughout her career, Laurer broke down barriers by challenging expectations of womanhood and athleticism. Just a year after the Emmys red carpet, Laurer posed for the cover of Playboy’s November 2000 issue, an experience she said, “made me feel beautiful.” Her nude photoshoot reportedly went on to break sales records, but it ruffled the feathers of Vince McMahon, co-founder of WWE, she said. “Vince didn’t want a Playboy model holding the (World) title,” she continued during the Wrestling Inc interview. “I was fighting for my femininity and fighting for my own style, so there were a lot of changes happening at the same time.”
Laurer was as much of a rule-breaker in fashion, appearing on red carpets head-to-toe in sequins, dressed up as Wonder Woman, or draped in chunky silver jewellery from forehead to jaw. The awards circuit, like the ring, was just another stage, and Laurer approached it from the perspective of having fun, even if that meant laughing off a wardrobe malfunction as she did at the 2005 People’s Choice Awards when she broke the heel of her black laced stiletto boots. In 2008, she worked with a fashion photographer to create her own photobook, “Paper Doll,” which featured editorial-style images of Laurer dressed up alongside her own poetry.
Wrestlers, perhaps more than any other professional athlete, understand the importance of clothing as performance. Pro-wrestling is theatrically staged, and costumes are a huge part of the storyline. Laurer’s spandex match gear, which she often paired with fishnet tights and a choker necklace, was her armor. Recently, wrestling culture has been receiving more recognition from the fashion world — Jean Paul Gaultier made elaborately embellished lucha libre masks for his Spring-Summer 2015 show, Chappell Roan wore a pink and blue luchador-inspired outfit made of latex and iridescent leather at Lolapalooza in 2024, and Mattel launched a line of WWE Barbie dolls in 2021.
In her WWE leather dress, Laurer went head-to-head with narrow beauty standards and fashion’s insular culture on the Emmy’s red carpet. Looking back at the striking photo almost 30 years later, it’s clear she won.
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