Take it From Taylor Swift: Pop Stars Love a Babydoll Dress

Reported by Vogue.

There is something quietly radical about a dress designed to look innocent. The babydoll — that thigh-skimming, often sheer, inherently girly silhouette — has spent decades being dismissed as too cute, too soft, too much of a lot of things women are told not to be. And yet, right now, pop music's biggest names are wearing it everywhere.

Taylor Swift recently stepped out in New York for a family dinner in a black crepe Valentino babydoll with a silver sequined bust, courtesy of designer Michele, paired with rhinestone peep-toe Louboutins and her signature red lip. Glamorous, precise, quintessentially her. Meanwhile, Olivia Rodrigo previewed her forthcoming album in Barcelona wearing a pink ditsy floral minidress with puff sleeves and matching bloomers — then grounded the whole thing with knee-high Doc Martens. The internet had opinions. Some called it infantilizing. Rodrigo disagreed, and according to Vogue, she had receipts: "I just remember being younger and having pictures of Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland from all these riot grrrl punk bands in their babydoll dresses, just owning it."

The Dress Has Always Been a Statement

That context matters. The babydoll's subversive legacy runs through the entire history of women using femininity as provocation — Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland pairing ultra-femme silhouettes with noise and fury, Kim Gordon making softness feel like a threat. The dress was never just decorative. It was a contradiction worn on purpose. Rodrigo is clearly paying attention to that lineage, and the backlash to her Barcelona look reads less like a fashion critique and more like discomfort with a young woman doing exactly what she wants.

Sabrina Carpenter arrived at her own version through a different door entirely. The sheer, gauzy babydolls she wore throughout her Short N' Sweet tour and her recent SNL performance were deliberate Brigitte Bardot references — 1960s sex-kitten energy reframed through Carpenter's particular brand of knowing humor. Her reasoning was refreshingly unphilosophical: "I have no insecurities — no thoughts about anything — because I'm just so comfortable in those little dresses." Comfort as confidence. Simple, effective, true.

What's interesting is how differently each of these women wears the same basic shape — Swift in sequins and Louboutins, Rodrigo in floral with combat boots, Carpenter in something almost sheer and wholly Bardot — and yet the dress functions the same way for all of them: as ownership. The babydoll isn't making a comeback so much as it's being reclaimed, again, by women who know exactly what they're doing in it.

Read the original at Vogue.