Olivia Rodrigo's Babydoll Dress Was a Rorschach Test

Olivia Rodrigo wore a floral baby-doll dress, pink bloomers, and knee-high leather boots at an intimate Barcelona concert, which led to online accusations of “sexy baby” and “pedo core.” Rodrigo linked the look to punk influences from the 1990s, including Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love, who used baby-doll dresses with punk rock to reject fetishization of girlhood. Similar backlash targeted those artists, including harsh 1994 commentary and broader fashion criticism after runway appearances by Giorgio Armani and Anna Sui. The baby-doll dress has moved between children’s and adult wardrobes across centuries, reflecting that “kiddie” and “grown” clothing styles have never been strictly separate, even as policing of women’s wearing persists.

"Rodrigo, though, appeared to have specific references in mind: In a recent interview, she noted that she's currently inspired by artists such as Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love, who paired baby-doll dresses with punk rock in the '90s to repudiate the fetishization of girlhood. But those artists, too, were disparaged for the look back then-one reviewer in 1994 called Love's style that of a "raddled Baby Jane whose notion of clothes-shopping is to lie in a skip outside a paedophile brothel.""

"And criticisms of the style reached into the world of fashion more broadly. After Giorgio Armani and Anna Sui featured baby-doll dresses and pleated skirts in '90s runway shows, one New York Times writer remarked, "Is there anything more perverse and weird than grown women wearing kiddie clothes?""

"Baby-doll dresses have clearly been a magnet for moral panic for decades. But though some people might associate them squarely with girlhood, the history of the billowy dress is far more convoluted: It has traveled, over the centuries, between kid and adult closets. This fluidity reflects how "kiddie" and "grown" clothes have never had strictly differentiated styles, fashion historians told me, and how the line between the two has constantly shifted-even if the policing of how these garments are worn, especially by women, has remained constant."

Read at The Atlantic