2025's Worst-Dressed News Personalities So Far

News hosts seem to play it pretty safe sartorially a majority of the time. In their industry, tailored blazers and crisp button-ups abound, and the humble sheath dress has been done to death. Because anchors' outfits can start to feel a bit like a boring uniform, it's refreshing to see them step out of their comfort zones on occasion. But sometimes they risk losing their credibility with fashion risks that call into question their taste and decision-making skills.

Over at Fox News, the female hosts are plagued with Donald Trump-like tans, and "Fox & Friends" host Ainsley Earhardt is always parading around in leg-baring looks. Many of her colleagues also wear dresses regularly and look like they've had plenty of experience in the beauty pageant circuit. Of why she didn't mind the network's news anchor Barbie aesthetic, one of its former stars, Megyn Kelly, told Marie Claire in 2011, "The way I look is a part of my business. It is a visual medium." And with the advent of social media came increased scrutiny not only on what news anchors wear on air but also on their off-duty looks. This is where a lot of them have stepped out in outfits that they probably wish they had kept off the record.

According to WWD, there was only one fashion rule Stephanie Ruhle and other attendees were asked to follow at the Lingua Franca runway show during New York Fashion Week: Guests were encouraged to wear statement sweaters. Ruhle dutifully stuck to the dress code, but it's unclear exactly what kind of statement she was trying to make. Perhaps the MSNBC host was trying to draw attention to the plight of jungle cats getting eaten alive by vicious insects?

White tufts covered Ruhle's festive red top, making it look like she was getting swarmed by winged insects or standing in for a fly fisherman's tacklebox. Her matching red scarf could have come from one of those holiday gift sets you grab as an afterthought from a display near the front door of a department store (you know, the ones that come with a matching hat and oversized gloves), and there was no cohesion whatsoever between the upper and lower halves of her outfit. She probably couldn't find anything that looked good with her bizarre top, so she just settled for a skirt that she liked as a standalone piece; she once revealed on X that she's a big fan of leopard print.

Ruhle is a bold dresser who made some successful style statements in 2025, such as an electric blue lace pantsuit that was a real standout. However, she also had a few other misses that were more minor fashion offenses, including a black top over a white collared shirt that was a conventcore snore and a white peplum top that felt dated.

In some of her Instagram photos, Tomi Lahren dresses like she's trying to appeal to a rural American fanbase in casual pieces like denim cutoffs, baseball caps, and camouflage pants. Lahren also owns some tacky cowgirl clothing, including white boots that would be the perfect finishing touch for a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader costume. Her wardrobe reads a little basic department store at times and would make Anna Wintour's blood run cold, but she did make an attempt to dress like a Mar-a-Lago guest's idea of loud luxury in February 2025. In fact, her gold velvet gown could have been swiped from the windows of Donald Trump's beach club.

When she decided to share her Scarlett O'Hara moment with her Instagram followers, Lahren had the man of Mar-a-Lago on the brain. "In our Golden Era of President Trump," she captioned a photo of her dress, which was similar in color to the president's flaxen locks. But unlike his amber waves of grated cheddar, her dress didn't have a light and wispy quality; instead, it weighed her down. The heavy material clearly would have been more at home on a sturdy curtain rod with ornate gold finials — perhaps one mounted on the wall of Trump's new White House ballroom.

Some of Lahren's other style missteps of 2025 include embracing too many tired Trumpland trends. An example is the textured pink blazer she wore on her OutKick show, which feels like something we've seen many times before. Can't we just agree that it's time to call it a day on tweed and bouclé and show Barbiecore the door?

Blond might be the default at Fox News, but in May 2025, Kayleigh McEnany seemed to rebel against the network's attire expectations, which appears to be anything appropriate for a Southern sorority luncheon. For a roundtable discussion on "The Five," she wore a black sheath dress with grommets and a lace-up detail directly underneath her clavicles. If a teen of the early aughts were to march into a Hot Topic store with a fistful of dollars, they might leave with a top featuring a similar design detail and wear it to a Fall Out Boy concert, along with their finest combat boots. McEnany was questioning ex-president Joe Biden's mental acuity when she said, "This is gravely serious." However, it was difficult to take her seriously when she was dressed like Regina George trying to cosplay as an emo kid.

McEnany's delicate necklace was definitely not in the same style genre as her dress, and her simple silver cross pendant looked like it was trying to scooch away from those passé grommets. Many of her other worst style moments of the year also involved tacky embellishments, from rows of silver bows to puckering zippers and oversized gold buttons that transformed brightly colored blazers into bad '80s throwbacks.

Lara Trump is leggy, blond, and married to the heir of a golf course empire, and for better or worse, she typically dresses the part. However, the first daughter-in-law, who was given her own Fox News show in February 2025, did wear a snakeskin minidress months later for a project that was bound to get her haters hissing: a song and music video with rapper Mohamed Ramadan.

Lara's attempt to launch a singing career has been soundly ridiculed, and it turns out that her talent for singing is on par with her ability to choose an outfit that at least makes her look the part of a capable performer. The clingy, long-sleeved dress she plucked from her closet was very Y2K — Sarah Michelle Gellar even stepped out in blue snakeskin pants in 2000. It was something a clubgoer might wear back in the day while shaking their tailfeather to hits like "Whistle While You Twurk" and "Wobble Wobble." Lara's stretchy dress even had a cutout on the stomach that would be perfect for anyone looking to show off an outline left behind by a Playboy bunny tanning salon sticker.

Unfortunately, the snake mistake was one of many outfits that missed the mark for Lara in 2025. She kicked the year off by taking style notes from Cruella de Vil with the red dress she wore to the inaugural ball, although her odd detached sleeves probably would make the stylish villain cringe, and it was downhill from there when she dressed almost exactly like Donald Trump during a visit to one of his golf courses.

While she usually looks professional and polished, CNN's Kaitlan Collins has suffered a few fashion disasters over the years. In 2025, she was at the White House when she had one of these sartorial lapses in judgment. Donald Trump's new ballroom was far from finished, but she appeared to be dressed for one of his theme parties (like "The Great Gatsby"-inspired bash he had at Mar-a-Lago during the government shutdown). Collins' outfit was so '70s-coded that it veered into costume territory, with an unbuttoned collared shirt, a blazer in that awful shade of mustard yellow that was ubiquitous during the decade, and matching tinted aviators.

It's easy to imagine Collins' attire in the pages of a menswear catalogue during the era when Trump's real estate career was just starting to take off. It also looked like a way less cool version of something Robert Redford would have worn around that time. However, it sounds like Collins doesn't want her fashion choices to command the kind of attention "The Sting" star's wardrobe did. "An outfit should allow you to focus on what really matters and the work that you're doing. In that sense, [fashion] is like a supporting character to you and your job," she told Marie Claire in 2024.

In 2025, Collins made a few other questionable ensemble choices that needed some editing to make them more streamlined and sophisticated. They included a belted checked blazer over a white ribbed turtleneck and a pink maxi skirt paired with a striped button-down and patterned scarf.

It's a shame there was no fashion forecast to warn "NBC News" meteorologist Dylan Dreyer that she was about to get hit by a perfect storm of outdated trends before heading out to support Hoda Kotb in May 2025. She showed up at the launch event for Kotb's wellness brand, Joy 101, looking like she'd traveled over two decades to get there.

The "Today" host's denim maxi skirt, cropped pink and white striped polo shirt, and wide white belt wouldn't have looked out of place in a high schooler's closet in the late '90s or early 2000s. But at least she was wearing an Apple watch to drag her look out of the era of MySpace and flip phones. Dreyer's huge statement earrings and nude high heels were also inexplicably dressy additions to a very casual outfit, which looked like it didn't belong in the same room as Kotb's elegant satin halter gown and Al Roker's snazzy suit. And if her top and bulky skirt look familiar to you, perhaps you remember the same combo being a part of the Duggar sisters' modest wardrobe in the aughts.

The cut of the stiff denim skirt also created a column silhouette with zero definition of Dreyer's waist. One of her other least successful looks of 2025 had a similar boxy effect; a yellow miniskirt that looked over-starched, a tucked-in white T-shirt, and a wide black belt.

In March 2025, former "CBS Evening News" anchor Norah O'Donnell attended the National Women's History Museum's 2025 Women Making History Awards Gala in footwear designed by a woman who made fashion history, for better or for worse. Her Frankenshoes, a pair of sneaker and stiletto hybrids, were the creation of Sara Blakely, the entrepreneur responsible for convincing women that they need to vacuum seal every bulge on their bodies inside her special shapewear: Spanx.

It's hard to imagine Blakely's Sneex shoes catching on without the brand recognition behind them; they just don't look attractive with evening wear like O'Donnell's liquid metal dress above, and Blakely bred their usefulness at the gym out of them for the sake of a few extra inches of height. But they got Oprah Winfrey's coveted endorsement, so they were bound to wind up in the closets of some celebs.

Speaking of Oprah, in 2013, O'Donnell told O, The Oprah Magazine that one of her wardrobe essentials was her "hot pink Valentino ballet flats." They would have been a vast improvement over those Sneex. Unfortunately, O'Donnell seems rather attached to her elevated athletic shoes, as she also wore them for a May 2025 "CBS News" segment. Unfortunately, while they lengthened her legs, they did not elevate her crisp red pantsuit in the figurative sense; instead, they made it read sporty rather than sophisticated.

When Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell were still co-anchoring "CBS This Morning," Fashionista reported that O'Donnell would plan her on-air outfit around whatever King picked out. It seems O'Donnell kept taking style notes from her colleague, as King started rocking Sneex right after their release in 2024. She also wore a black and gray pair to the June 2025 premiere of the movie "F1." While we can almost see the vision (minus the shoes), the oversized pinstripe suit jacket and matching maxi skirt has a bit of a gangster vibe, if a mob boss was anti-inseam. King even carried a purse with a chain strap in lieu of wearing a pocket watch with a long chain.

Not content to just dress like a mafia don, King also LARPed as his missus — if Elle Woods married into the mob. She also would have blended right in with the kaleidoscopic crew that makes up the Muppet rock band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem in the pink faux fur coat, purple suede boots, patterned skirt, and multicolored fluffy scarf she was photographed wearing on the streets of NYC in February 2025. 

There was way too much going on, so it comes as no surprise that King's clothing choices have caused problems at work. Her morning show's "wardrobe guru" told Fashionista in 2015, "We as a news-oriented program sometimes have to ask her to tone it down." But while King's looks can be on the zany side, she definitely deserves some props for staying true to herself and remaining an adventurous dresser.

At the 2025 Fox Nation Patriot Awards, Sean Hannity presented first lady Melania Trump with the Patriot of the Year prize, but he dressed to impress her husband. In his white dinner jacket with black piping on the lapel, he closely resembled a certain snowy-haired mascot that peddles the president's favorite finger-lickin'-good poultry. The stark lines tracing the garment's details also had a drawn-on, cartoonish quality. Many social media users agreed that Hannity looked like Colonel Sanders, and it's no secret that Donald Trump is a fan of KFC. However, Hannity apparently bet on the wrong fast food chain, as it was McDonald's that Donald delivered a speech about days later (perhaps the Fox News host should have ordered a red and yellow clown costume instead).

Earlier in the year, two of Hannity's colleagues, Shannon Bream and Laura Ingraham, had worn similar white blazers with dark lapel trim, so if Joan Rivers were still with us, she would have roasted him like a healthier chicken entree in a "B***h Stole My Look" segment on "Fashion Police." Instead, we'll have to settle for a style smackdown from menswear expert Derek Guy, who wrote on X, "A white dinner jacket should be worn with a celebratory black bow tie, not a funereal black long tie. Also shouldn't be trimmed like some kind of boating blazer. Matching solid colored pocket square looks like it came in a plastic package with the tie." But at least Hannity wasn't cosplaying as the president again in a dark suit and clown-sized red tie, like he did for an October 2025 town hall.

Dana Perino gave red a bad rap more than once in 2025 with her outfit choices, including a calf-length crimson dress paired with a floral-print coat that was a little too grandmacore for its own good. For another of her "Friday Fit Check" videos, she hiked up her hemline and tried to pull off a far more youthful aesthetic. The "America's Newsroom" co-anchor seemed to draw inspiration from Miss Americana, as her outfit included many elements we've seen in Taylor Swift's game-day looks.

The black and red Kansas City Chiefs color palette Swift often sticks to while cheering for Travis Kelce was there, along with tights, black booties, and a short skirt. However, the proportions and silhouette of Perino's ensemble were a bit odd. There was a little too much flare flair going on with the bell sleeves and ruffled skirt, the silver details on her boots cut across her ankles and shortened her legs, and her skirt's high waistline made her torso look short and boxy. Although she sported the look just days before Kelce's team faced off against the Philadelphia Eagles at the Super Bowl, Perino told her Instagram followers that she was no Chiefs cheerleader; she was rocking red to raise awareness for the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women movement. So while she suffered a fashion fumble, using her wardrobe to promote a good cause was a winning move.