Explainer: What are babydoll dresses and why are they controversial?
Olivia Rodrigo wears an Anna Sui babydoll dress on the cover of her new album "You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love" Captured from @annasui/Instagram
Olivia Rodrigo's third studio album "You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love" drops on June 12. The American pop princess has been teasing her new era for months, with a fresh aesthetic defined by bubblegum pink and babydoll dresses, a wardrobe choice some have deemed controversial and which has largely overshadowed any other discourse around the album.
Rodrigo, 23, kicked off the next phase of her career by donning an off-the-shoulder blouse and matching bloomer shorts from Chloe's pre-fall 2026 collection for the music video of the album's lead single, "Drop Dead", and unveiled a Target-exclusive version of the album cover in which she wears an Anna Sui babydoll dress.
She wore a similar dress by French label Generation78 for her Spotify Billions Club live performance in Barcelona on May 8. Some social media users slammed her outfit choices as "inappropriate" and "problematic", going so far as to claim she was presenting herself as a "sexualized child".
Rodrigo herself finally weighed in on the controversy, calling out her critics for the "weird" rhetoric in a recent episode of The New York Times' pop culture podcast Popcast, adding, "It just shows how we really normalise paedophilia in our culture." And for the record, Rodrigo isn't the only young female star of the moment wearing babydoll dresses - fellow former Disney starlet Sabrina Carpenter is clearly a fan too.
Contrary to popular belief, or what their name might suggest, babydoll dresses were never made for children to begin with. So where did the name come from and why are these dresses causing such a ruckus? We break down the dress trend - and ensuing controversy - below.
American lingerie designer Sylvia Pedlar is often credited with creating the babydoll style: a loose-fitting dress with a high waistline that usually falls to mid-thigh, with delicate feminine accents like puffed sleeves, often in lace or chiffon fabric. With widespread rationing in place during World War II, Pedlar intentionally shortened the nightgowns she was designing to save on fabric. The name of the dress came later, when the lead character in the 1956 film Baby Doll donned a similarly styled nightgown.
Model Alexa Chung is a fan of the babydoll style / Captured from @alexachung/Instagram
By the 1960s, celebrities like Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot were popularising babydoll dresses, while legendary designers Cristobal Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy incorporated the style in their high fashion collections.
Later, in the 1990s, alt rock stars like Courtney Love popularized the style again, in an era of fashion that Rodrigo said, in an interview with Vogue, inspired her as a young teen.
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Rodrigo's point about "normalised paedophilia" speaks to a long legacy of misogyny in pop culture that places the burden of men's perception squarely on women. Some critics, for instance, have accused the star of cosplaying a Lolita-like figure - a reference to Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel (which became a 1962 film) about a man who becomes sexually obsessed with a 12-year-old girl.
Society, it seems, has always held women responsible for public reactions shaped by the male gaze. Short skirts, such as those popularised by British designer Mary Quant in the 1960s, were once deemed obscene. And long before that, the corset controversies of the 19th century - when European women began rejecting the restrictive undergarment - caused their own moral panic.
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Reactions to Rodrigo's attire may not even be about clothes at all. Amid ongoing public scrutiny of the Jeffrey Epstein case and his sexual trafficking of minors, sensitivities around the sexualisation of young women - and how their appearance is read - are running especially high. Yet that concern is too often directed at women themselves, rather than at the societal structures that put them at risk in the first place.
Speaking on Popcast, Rodrigo noted that her far more revealing Guts tour outfits - sparkly bras and matching short-shorts - drew nowhere near the same criticism as one babydoll dress.
"I just think if we start dressing in a way that's like 'Oh, I don't want some f***ing freak to think I'm sexy, like a baby,' or some crazy thing like that, it's losing the plot a little bit," she added.
"You shouldn't be responsible for some guy sexualizing you in a way that was never your intention."
Sabrina Carpenter in a babydoll dress / Captured from @sabrinacarpenter/Instagram
Babydoll dresses are certainly having a moment - part of a wider bohemian fashion revival, with luxury brand Chloe arguably leading the charge. Viral young brands like Selkie and Sandy Liang have also helped boost the babydoll dress' visibility over recent years.
Read the article at SCMP.