The babydoll look has been captivating the fashion world since the mid-’90s, and it continually morphs to reflect our current fashion mindset.
When images of Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington in the classy babydoll looks in Anna Sui’s spring/summer 1994 show—her debut—went everywhere, they ignited a sense of femininity deep in the Western psyche that has been growing into a counterculture ever since. Recalling the event, which marked her unique and enduring contribution to fashion, Sui told: “I started getting calls from all the supermodels.
The long- or short-sleeved lace-collared minidress—typically worn with bare legs or opaque leggings, flats or platform Mary Janes and hair bows, headbands or barrettes, along with kawaii makeup —epitomizes a subtle, sexually introverted girl whose inner world is fuelled by a vivid imagination: She reads, she writes and she illustrates her thoughts in a paper journal with pretty pens. She is shy, her voice is gentle and she is caring but also in need of care.
Brigitte Bardot played with this “coquette” look in 1960s France. “Dolly birds” brought an equivalent sultry girlishness to 1980s London. The 1990s saw grit being added to the motif with figures like Courtney Love, who favoured babydoll dresses while fronting her girl band, Hole.
The babydoll trend continued to morph into the mid-aughts, when Tumblr girl bloggers favoured the look. Soon after, gen Z tweens took it further by posting streams of babydoll-face-filter selfies, becoming a generation of Lolita ingenues striving to look like Japanese anime characters. With the cultural backdrop of Blair Waldorf’s preppy babydoll inand Marc Jacobs’ many versions of the dress, this form of femininity’s influence had wide appeal.