Olivia Rodrigo’s Spooky Babydoll Dress Is a ‘The Cure’ Easter Egg
2 min readTHE RUNDOWN
- Olivia Rodrigo attended the opening of “Olivia Rodrigo: The Cure Unraveled” at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on September 1.
- The music star wore an archival Undercover dress that nodded to her hit song.
- Rodrigo recently spoke out against the discourse surrounding the babydoll dress.
Critics be damned, Olivia Rodrigo isn’t backing away from the babydoll dress. In fact, the singer’s latest twist on the twee look is perhaps her edgiest—and most meaningful—yet.
On Tuesday night in Los Angeles, Rodrigo attended the opening of the “Olivia Rodrigo: the cure unraveled” exhibition at the Grammy Museum in an archival Undercover look by Jun Takahashi. The Halloween-orange piece features all the hallmarks of the babydoll silhouette: a velveteen Peter Pan collar, dainty cap sleeves, and a short hemline. But it was the dress’s skeletal print, a black rendering of a rib cage and spine, that gave the otherwise saccharine silhouette a decidedly punk edge.
Olivia Rodrigo attends “Olivia Rodrigo: the cure unraveled” at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
Undercover fall/winter 2013.
Rodrigo toned down the millennial styling of the runway look, doing away with the light-up skeleton bag, T-strap heels, and bunny ears in favor of patent leather Mary Janes.
The singer’s skeleton minidress sits firmly in the aesthetic of her new era, but it also hints at her single “the cure,” which is the focus of the Grammy Museum’s “Olivia Rodrigo: the cure unraveled” exhibition. In the song’s music video, Rodrigo seeks an antidote to her feelings by operating on felted human hearts.
Olivia Rodrigo attends “Olivia Rodrigo: the cure unraveled” at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
In May, Rodrigo kicked off her you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love era in a Generation78 puff-sleeve floral minidress. The look caused a wave of online discourse, with some accusing the singer of infantilizing herself for the male gaze, despite the fact that the babydoll dress has long been a way for women in music to reclaim narratives around femininity and authorship.
“It’s just this rhetoric we’re fed as girls since we’re so little, which is, don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualize your body and it’s your fault,” Rodrigo said on The New York Times’s Popcast. “It’s so weird. I didn’t think I looked sexy in that at all. I was like, ‘This is so cool. I feel like I look like Kathleen Hanna or Courtney Love’—all these people who are my heroes, and I felt cool and comfortable in it.”