Olivia Rodrigo wore a pretty babydoll dress while performing in Barcelona, and the internet had a meltdown. Let’s talk about it.
The 23-year-old singer recently performed nine songs from her discography during an exclusive concert in Barcelona, celebrating each of them crossing one billion streams on Spotify. For the occasion, she wore a floral puff-sleeved piece by Génération78, embellished with ribbons and crystals, paired with matching bloomer shorts and knee-high Dr Martens boots.
Within hours, clips from the performance flooded the internet — not because of the milestones being celebrated or the performance, but because some people online decided the Gen-Z singer’s outfit represented an ethical collapse.
Commenters wasted no time accusing Rodrigo of infantilising herself and dressing like “toddlers”. What’s baffling, though, is that in a world where one of the most common stage costumes for female pop stars is often a sequinned leotard (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that), the internet seems particularly enraged by a babydoll dress.
When did the chatter around Olivia Rodrigo’s outfits start?
Rodrigo’s babydoll-dress era did not begin in Barcelona. She has worn similar silhouettes before. To introduce the sonic aesthetic of her forthcoming album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, she released the lead single “drop dead”, accompanied by a music video directed by Petra Collins.
Shot inside the Palace of Versailles, the video shows Rodrigo twirling through gilded halls in a ruffled blue Chloé Pre-Fall 2026 blouse styled with silk tap shorts and knee-high socks. She is so lovestruck that she appears to have forgotten her shoes altogether.
Critics immediately branded the styling “problematic” and “childlike”, rather than seeing it for what it was: a dreamy, French Rococo-coded fantasy centred on the intensity of early love.
The Barcelona performance simply added more fuel to the fire.
Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time a female celebrity’s outfits have been judged so ruthlessly. Before Rodrigo, some netizens shared the same sentiments about Sabrina Carpenter’s stage style. A young woman exercising autonomy over her own body and wearing what she wants doesn’t sit well with many people.
Rodrigo has explained her choices
Rodrigo had, in fact, already explained this. In an interview with Vogue, she explained, “I really love the idea of a babydoll [dress]. 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. I always thought that that was really cool, and so I like that there’s an element of that. I also like that it kind of feels a little pajama-y.”
A brief history of the babydoll dress
The babydoll silhouette was created in 1942 by lingerie designer Sylvia Pedlar as a practical response to wartime fabric rationing — short, loose, functional.
By 1958, Cristóbal Balenciaga had adapted the trapeze silhouette into couture and later Hubert de Givenchy also embraced this new style. By the 1960s, it was the uniform of an entire generation pushing back against the cinched-waist decorum of the previous decade. Twiggy wore it. Jane Birkin wore it. Brigitte Bardot wore it.
The fashion establishment of 2026 has not missed any of this. Miu Miu, Chloé, Ann Demeulemeester, Loewe, and Valentino all sent versions of the babydoll silhouette down their Spring/Summer 2026 runways. Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, and Kacey Musgraves have all leaned into the shape this year. Nobody called their hemlines a societal collapse.
So, when did the babydoll dress become such a controversial choice?
Could this be another bot smear campaign?
Somehow, in this era, Olivia Rodrigo wearing a playful babydoll dress has sparked the internet’s newest moral panic.
Rodrigo’s references are deeply rooted in punk history. In her career right now, drawing inspiration from Kat Bjelland, Courtney Love, and Allison Wolfe of Bratmobile makes perfect sense.
Bjelland, in particular, was known for pairing hyper-feminine, doll-like clothing with the rage and chaos that defined riot grrrl punk. The contrast was intentional — a challenge to patriarchal ideas that framed femininity as passive or submissive. Seen through that lens, Rodrigo’s styling choices are not regressive at all.
And yet, many people seemed to miss the reference entirely, even after Rodrigo spelt it out.
The Rolling Stone magazine also questioned whether the backlash could be artificially amplified, writing: “Could it be yet another example of a bot-coordinated attack?” Such campaigns often rely on fake accounts to manufacture outrage and create the illusion of overwhelming public consensus where none actually exists.
Nothing has been proven in Rodrigo’s case so far, and the backlash may simply boil down to old-fashioned misogyny. Still, the pattern feels undeniably familiar.
Olivia Rodrigo is 23 years old. She is releasing her third album. She has cited her influences, explained her aesthetic, dressed with intention and historical literacy, and been met with accusations so dark they would be laughable if they weren’t also exhausting. Her babydoll dress isn’t childlike. It is part of a long lineage of women reclaiming softness on their own terms.
(Main and featured image: Xavi Torrent/Getty Images for Spotify)
Note : The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
