Nothing says “I grew up in the early 2000s” quite like silently giggling to yourself when a dinner companion declares “That’s hot”, in a fanned outrage at their meal.

That is precisely the legacy of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. They creep back up on you, earworming their catchphrases into the backs of your mind to one day hit you like a ‘Nam flashback. Whether it’s the summery percussion of the #18 smash hit Stars are Blind, or singing the nonsensical “Sanasa” song to yourself (the namesake of this column, thank you) – they always come back.

Let’s take a look back at where it all started.

Paris and Nicole, Queen Bees of Beverly Hills

Childhood friends since two years old, Paris & Nicole were never short of luxury, as the daughters of a multi-billion dollar hotel conglomerate & a bestselling pop legend of the 80s, respectively. The pair garnered a party-girl reputation, affectionately known as “famous for being famous”. Richie told Harper’s Bazaar in 2007 that she and Hilton were “partners in crime”: “When we were little, our parents always wanted to separate us. And I remember, word for word, them saying it’s not that it’s me and not that it’s her. It was the two of us together.”

It wasn’t until the 2003 reality series The Simple Life that the pair reached new levels of bedazzled notoriety. The series — which spanned 5 seasons and 55 episodes from 2003 to 2007 — catapulted Hilton and Richie to international fame in their own right. The show depicted the socialites swapping their quote “Ro-Day-O for Ro-Dee-O”, plunged into the world of privilegeless peasantry, where they worked various jobs across the US such as farming, maids, camp counsellors, and fast-food servers.

The show debuted with “phenomenal” ratings, retaining an audience just short of 10 million into the second series.

The era was unlike anything history had ever encoutered before. Juicy Couture tracksuits in every color under the sun. White LV monogram bowlers, massive sunglasses, Chanel headscarves — all whilst corrupting the youth of the town, traumatising the gentle old women, fistfighting one another in Sonic cup character suits in the middle of a Walmart, on company time no less. Iconic is an understatement.

The Siege of Paris

That was until the Fox network canceled the show following claims Hilton and Richie “had been feuding” and “no longer proved compatible” with one another. Rumors flew left and right about the cause of the rift, confirmed in 2005: “Nicole and I are no longer friends,” as Hilton told People. “Nicole knows what she did, and that’s all I’m ever going to say about it.”

The majority ruled that the pair were feuding over the disproportionate levels of fame, with Hilton soaring further than sidekick Richie. A source told People that Richie was jealous of Hilton’s attention, and resented her for receiving more exposure, like Hilton’s solo hosting of Saturday Night Live in Feb 2005, despite the pair having hosted the 2004 Teen Choice Awards in tandem.

Richie’s exclusion wasn’t exactly unfounded. Hilton – the heiress to a $360m fortune — was a modern-day Barbie. Author (Confessions of an Heiress), perfumier (Paris Hilton by Paris Hilton), 90210 socialite, entrepreneur (Club Paris, the nightclubs), model (Anne Bowen, Calvin Klein, Heatherette, etc.), movie star (House of Wax), popstar (Paris, 2006). The PCH princess was shaping up to be a tycoon in the making, reminiscent of the Hilton dynasty’s founder, her great-grandfather Conrad Hilton.

In retaliation, it was alleged that Richie screened Hilton’s leaked sex tape at a party celebrating the SNL show (the supposed “what she did” Hilton mentioned), though reps for Richie denied this.

Sources on Team Richie argued that the feuding began because Nicole had grown out of her party girl days, and wanted to spend more time with then-fiancé, Adam Goldstein.

Meanwhile, Hilton had taken to new besties to replace Richie – infamously papped offguard, with her frenemy Lindsey Lohan, and Queen of Pop Britney Spears, misogynistically dubbed “The Bimbo Summit” by the NY Post, a title reclaimed by the new Gen Bimbettes of today.

Credit.

In an epochal act of 2000s divadom, Paris dropped the scathing diss, “Jealousy” – with lyrics so overtly pointing to Ritchie: “I thought you were my best friend.” / You’re not the girl I once knew.” / “You sold yourself for your fame, still never walk a day in my shoes.” In an interview with The Guardian ahead of the album’s release, Hilton said of her ex-BFF, “I think she just let fame get to her head. She’s only nice to famous people. I don’t know what happened to her. She’s just not the same sweet girl I used to know. I wish that she’d come back. It breaks my heart.”

Still locked in a contract for the show, The Simple Life’s fourth season was filmed in dual enemy camps – Hilton on one side, Richie on the other – based on the premise that the two would compete in different family homes in a war to be the best housewife. The season ended with a “We have to talk” text from Paris to Nicole, to which Nicole responded “So talk” — and, fade to black. Talk about gripping television.

The Paris Peace Accords of 2006

Credit - TMZ.

A ceasefire was signed in October 2006, when TMZ caught the pair “breaking bread” at Dan Tana’s Steakhouse in West Hollywood, reportedly arriving together in Hilton’s distinct Range Rover.

The fifth and final season of the series premiered the following year, and all wounds seemed old news following their filmed reconciliation in the first episode. In the series finale, Hilton said, “I don’t even know why we’re fighting. I think it’s just the tabloids.” Richie confirmed that “half the things the tabloids said that I said were not true.”

The Aftermath

Following the end of the series, the pair remained in the spotlight. Nicole worked her way up in the fashion world, eventually marrying Good Charlotte musician Joel Madden, with whom she has two sons. Paris publicly expressed her excitement at Richie’s pregnancy.

Paris began a career as a DJ and continued expanding her empire. Though the pair were on good terms, the modern relationship was a far-cry from their “sliving” days.

In 2018, while appearing on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Richie gave an update on her relationship with Hilton, stating that “I haven’t spoken to her in a while, but we are very good friends. I love her.”

Hilton did the same during her own appearance on the show a year later, telling Cohen that, “We actually were just texting like three days ago because it’s our high school reunion, so she was reminding me of the date.”

In 2021, Richie was in attendance at Hilton’s wedding to Carter Reum, spotted laughing and dancing together, taking to social media, reminding the 2000s babies of the old days, captioned “Sill & Bill Forever 👯‍♀️ Thank you @NicoleRichie for sharing my special day with me. 🥰❤️ Love you! 🤗 #Sanasa 💕”.

All seemed quiet on the Western Avenue front. That was until it was announced in May 2024 that Sill and Bill would be starring in a new reality series for Peacock entitled “Paris & Nicole: The Encore” — a three-part miniseries that saw the pair returning to their simple lives in Altus, Arkansas 20 years on.

For the baby blue blinged Motorola Razr babies and Y2K revivalists alike, the announcement was like the second coming of JC (Juicy Couture, that is – duh).

The Legacy

The reign of Paris and Nicole is remembered with fondness amongst most. Their unwavering personas of privilege and mischief-causing shenanigans remained stamped in our culture — from either the 90s babies foraging for a grain of nostalgia, or the new Gen wannabes like myself, who yearn to experience any time other than this one — especially if it’s bright pink and rhinestoned.

The Simple Life as a concept has been hailed as an accidental genius foray on classism. Whilst a period piece on post 9/11 Bush’s USA, the message remains ever as relevant for Trump’s. “Paris and Nicole are hyperbolic examples of metropolitan lifestyles that provoke rural anxiety. They are portrayed as the worst of their kind: vain, materialistic, lewd and destructive party animals, who believe in nothing and care for no one,” wrote i-d’s Cassidy George. “Their nihilistic grandeur is contrasted with the “wholesome” family values of the people of Altus, who embody the vestiges of white, Christian and conservative values.”

Nowadays, Paris and Nicole are remembered as post-feminist prophets. Their scantily-clad mini-skirts and underwear-as-outerwear style shocked almost everyone they came into contact with. Their sexual empowerment was demonised as Altus’ own Scarlet Letter. Today, they’re pioneers of fashion. It’s hard to find a Gen Z Juicy fanatic that doesn’t have the pair plastered on their Pinterest. Their outfits were silent liberation, anti-conformist, bodily-autonomy reclamation.

The show’s perspective was often “Look how stupid and unaware these rich, dumb blonde bitches are.” This rhetoric, combined with their unapologetic attitude and hyper-femininity, led to a slate of hate campaigns in the patriarchal media of the early 2000s, where it seemed impossible that a woman could possess both the ability to tastefully pair DKNY with Dior, and the business acumen of a white-collar man. They may not have known how to do laundry, or chores, or who the Secretary of State was…but they did know how to sell. What makes money. To work hard, not in the blue-collar traditional sense, but to capitalise on capitalisation. Their image was their cash, and they did everything they could to roll in it.

In 2006, third-wave feminist pioneer Naomi Wolf shot at Hilton especially, arguing “The pigeon-toed I’m-a-little-girl thing combined with the deliberate strategic convergence of pornography as entree into superstardom.” She described Hilton as a “palette cleanser. She’s like, as semiotics would say, an empty signifier, so you can project absolutely anything on to her, which is the perfect situation for branding.” Ironic, considering Wolf’s entire philosophy from her bestselling The Beauty Myth is that women’s biggest weapon is autonomous choice to do whatever she pleases with her image and body. And in a true Parisian fashion, her response to the criticism was “I’ve no idea [what Wolf means]... But I think it was nice.” Hate her cuz you ain’t her, comes to mind.

Instead, they were subversive. They weaponised the sexist media and tropes that attempted to define them, and did the opposite. Who was to stop the pair from being both businesswomen, and brands, and entertainers, and just there for the fun of it sometimes? Richie admitted that the pair “caught on very early that The Simple Life had a formula,” and played into it for entertainment.

It became even more relevant during the 2008 MTV documentary “Paris, Not France”, where Hilton revealed. “Paris the heiress is a character I made”. Her image was entirely curated — the voice, the stupidity, the shallowness — and still is to this day (her “This is Paris” documentary confirms that even her new YouTube videos are different roles she puts on) — no one gets to see the true Paris, and that’s where her power lies. It’s funny that this was a revelation at the time. I find it hard to believe that the media were able to hide the very, very overt intelligence of these women and their billion dollar empires. Hilton said “I always knew what I was doing because I’m not a dumb blonde. I’m just very good at pretending to be one.”

But of course, being the target of a ream of hate campaigns takes a toll on everyone, even multi-millionaires. In an interview last year, Hilton admitted it was “difficult” to cope with the misogynistic light she was, and continues to be, painted in. “During the 2000s, the media was so misogynistic—they would target certain girls, and there was a small group of us that they would constantly berate and abuse.”

Paris and Nicole will always be icons. But where the media went wrong was in a false belief that girls idolized them by virtue of their ditzy LA skankism. That’s what men see. What any true feminist would see, and why we actually aspire to be like them, is that they have the intelligence to do both: to protect their privacy, wear what they want, say and do what they want, own the wealth of a man, drive 6-figure cars like men, act like men (and take the criticism, unlike men). We love them because they are forever, for the girls.

Last week’s Fall Haute Couture collections in Paris were the talk of the town. With three haute couture debuts, two prolific sophomore collections, and one elusive Dior wedding gown — it was a Fashion Week with giddy energy, dulled ever so slightly by the behemoth heatwave that left Paris in a blistering frenzy. Here’s the 411 on the collections, as they happened.

SCHIAPARELLI by Daniel Roseberry

Deep in the Place Vendôme, Daniel Roseberry called us into the Void for the Schiaparelli show. Roseberry, known for his anatomical surrealism, and ability to combine technicality with dream-weaving color and shape, drew from his own Abyss, mentioning in the show notes that he had attempted to replicate his last year’s creative process which proved beyond successful, and failed. The requirement of new innovation led to a different message as a whole, one of abstracted beauty — lost between agony and ecstasy. “It’s much more challenging to be asking questions in a season than making statements,” Roseberry put it.

In attendance was Emma Corrin, in an elaborate Schiaparelli bird-like sculpture, alongside Karlie Kloss, Anok Yai, Bad Bunny and Law Roach. The show opened with an EDM beat shooting through the mirrored floors, interpolated with the voice of Roseberry explaining the creative process behind the collection. Moving into the Clair de Lune as glamorous ballgowns graced the runway, the voice of Roseberry was heard describing the specularity as “light beings having a human experience,” literally, it seems — with one dress lighting the model inside out, and “The beauty of Schiap is that we’re not trying to sell you anything, we’re trying to inspire you, we’re trying to connect with you.”

Swapping the traditional silks and satins for latex, baked shapes of paint and clay, and strangely, silicone satin — the first use of the material in the atelier. Embellishment and embroidery pervaded throughout, with real flowers used to create a fantasy-driven dreamscape. Creatures of the deep paced the runway, with black latex tentacles spiralling from the model’s torso, and lobster pinks, tangerines, glossy darks, and the infamous Schaiparelli gold adorning. The final look was the “Humanoid Prometheus”, using augmented reality prosthetics cast in silicon. Roseberry’s take on surrealism seems more chimerical, celestial and beautifully unearthly than merely absurd. “Formulas are antithetical to the magic of creation, which can be found only in total surrender to the unknown.” Roseberry’s haute couture is ironically the very formula he fears — a consistent, imposed tale of the blissfully magical abyss.

DIOR by Jonathan Anderson

For Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore haute couture collection at Dior, the Parisian Musee Rodin was transformed into a verdant, paradisiac oasis, straight out of Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The pre-show film that played whilst we found our seats, whether online at the streamed YouTube premiere, or in the Musee itself, saw a quietly confident Anderson confiding his inspiration for the collection — mainly the Louisiana-born sculptress Lynda Benglis. His main focus for the collection was “the form”, which Bengalis thrusts centre stage in her art pieces.

Swapping the beat-pumping club pulses of his S/S27 menswear collection only last week for ambient rainforest & cricketing soporific lulls, the audience was entranced in an ode to Lady Gaia. A lullaby welcomed to counter the noise surrounding Anderson, haute fashion’s newest poster child fresh off the back of the Swift-Kelce wedding the week prior, for which Anderson was the couturier. Naturally, it was not only the fashion glitterati sitting in anticipation, but a new crowd peeking through a digital window at the fashion world, many of whom had never heard the name “Jonathan Anderson” before.

As the likes of the Arnaults, Sabrina Carpenter, and Josh O’Connor sat front row, the opening look was unveiled as a gray blanketed wrap around a silky fitted off white shirt, paired with black flowy pleated trousers, gold heels — and a quasi-spartan gold lamé helmet with a netted veil covering the model’s eyes.

Anderson, a long-time appreciator and collaborator of Benglis, weaved her unconventional forms and trademark pleats throughout the collection, using her sculptural and painting techniques to innovate new adornments of plisse fan-pleating, scrunching textures and cascades of wrapping. Reconstructing the timeless Bar Suit for a contemporary take, reimagining the Bar Jacket into a verdant green fringed tweed, and a grey houndstooth wool, paired with a large bow. The traditional Dior silhouette was moulded into a sculptural fluidity, almost reminiscent of a jellyfish in the ways the dresses swam left to right in their bubble-like seas of chrome silver or savannah grass pleats, paired with Indian inspired jewellery, according to the show notes.

The show may as well have taken place in the Amazon rather than Paris, with armadillo handbags, waterlily clutches, and Eastern-inspired fan dresses — on theme, as the audience sat in frantic fanning of themselves — whether in awe at the mastery or in despair at the 40° Parisian heatwave.

Though critics seem to have taken the stance that Anderson’s sequel was too Loewe and not enough Dior, moving away from the proven acclaimed defined New Look silhouette to free fluidity, Anderson hardly seems to care up there on top of the world. Closing the show was a not-so-subtle wedding gown, closing out as we began — full of the natural world, dotted with tulle flowers and embroidered palm leaves — perhaps a nod to what we can expect to see in the grand reveal of Anderson’s magnum opus in Swift’s MSG-worthy gown.

CHANEL by Matthieu Blazy

Once upon a time, a lauded creative director took his sophomore haute couture collection to the fantastical land of fairytales, transforming the Grand Palais into a wonderland of giant vines wrapping around stalks, huge rainbow surrealist flowers — evoking the awe Jack must have felt scaling the Beanstalk.

Appointed in April 2025, it is odd for a creative director having spent such a short period at a maison to have a reign already as prolific as Blazy, having become revered for a radical return to the core Chanel codes and philosophies, inducing what Vogue called “Chanel-mania”, prompting a profit up 5.2% in 2025, when luxury elsewhere has dramatically declined. This collection was no exception.

The opening look was a sheer mauvy suit, almost ragged in nature, latticed with red, white and purple strands which Vogue’s Sarah Mower described as “shape of bean fronds”. The model carried a tan leather-bound book, an original antique volume of fairytales kept by Gabrielle Chanel herself in her Rue Cambon apartment. “I think it was waiting there for me to find it”, Blazy said.

Pulling straight from the antique, influences of Goldilocks, Puss in Boots, the Ugly Duckling, and Jack and the Beanstalk flitted throughout. Dresses were decorated with greenery and flora, models walked on eggshells — quite literally, with one heel transformed into the hen’s golden egg. Another saw Jack as the heel, detailed with a blue butterfly. To match, was a golden hen dangled bag, as well as golden gelled down cap hair. The golden abundance of fantasy clearly pointed Blazy down the rabbit hole.

Statement gold jewellery, big beads, and appliqué flowers sat on raffia suits, with matching headwear — almost raggedy sticks and twigs, made to resemble straw. “As in a fairy tale, flowers bloom in tweeds, vines climb heels, magpies and their treasures populate braids. Inside the garments, personal details — to-do lists, initials — reveal the woman wearing them. Each silhouette unfolds like a story, thanks to the savoir-faire of the Haute Couture ateliers,” explained the Chanel notes.

Per Chanel, the timeless two-tone returned once again, in shoes and in suits, as Blazy was particularly mindful to use age inclusive model casting.

Of note was the closing look. Blazy opted to reject the Lagerfeld-invented precedent of closing with the Bride, having the flowery white lace veil and magnificent lower layers of tulle walk as Look 50. Instead, the closing look was, as expected of a return home to Coco, a little black dress. An elegant, simple yet chic straight neck black dress, decorated with a chaotic ream of black leaves, evocative of a fairytale witch or villain. Though for Coco, with the LBD, one could never go wrong.

ARMANI PRIVÉ by Silvana Armani

Silvana Armani has enormous shoes to fill. The niece of the legendary Giorgio Armani presented her sophomore collection at the new Palazzo Armani in Paris, with one muse in mind — embellishment. And embellishment in all forms, the hues of topaz, forest emerald, amethyst, garnet all reminiscent of sparkling jewels. The collection unravelled by color — the gray azure monochromatic suits drifted into a mauvey-charred, then to dazzling silk indigo-midnight blue ensembles. Consistent with the Armani way, the palette of faux noir “apparent black” glimmered throughout.

Boudoir came to play in full force, as models tiptoed sensually down the runway. “The boudoir is an intimate, deeply personal space where a woman can reflect, take time for herself, and devote attention to her own needs,” explains the show notes. Beads and embroidered applique contrasted the masculine tailoring, a regal energy cascading throughout. As Armani put it, “It evokes an intimate atmosphere in which soft rigor defines seduction, and allure arises from the interplay of revealing and concealing.” Confidently perfected trench coats, hemmed to the floor, sat atop flowing high-waisted straight leg trousers, with other looks’ top halves featuring extravagant feathers and lace.

The second half of the collection took understated glamour to levels beyond, with red-carpet ready ballgowns. Bare shoulders featured in almost all the garments, combined with fanciful circular one-shouldered asymmetrical silhouettes, or signature animalistic leopard references. The closing gown was a dazzling faux noir, straight necklined gown, embellished with hundreds of glittering beads, which continued into a draped overlay, creating a spider’s web-like pattern. Armani, forever the expert in quiet restraint and elegance.

BALENCIAGA by Pier Paolo Piccioli

When Demna left Balenciaga in May 2025, after a prolific reign, concerns flew when his successor — the ever colorful sculptor of fluidity, Pier Paolo Piccioli, was announced. What succeeded at Valentino was feared to fail at Balenciaga, and questions pondered whether PPP could bring another revolution.

Taking to his couture debut for the maison outside, at the International University City of Paris, PPP channelled Cristobal Balenciaga from the grave, studying his philosophy. “Cristóbal was obsessive with the body, and the conversation with the body,” Piccioli said. “Cristóbal Balenciaga used to say that a couturier has to be an architect for the shape, a painter for the colors, and a philosopher for the way people feel in the clothes.”

The product was an otherworldly, decadent display of fluorescent pink, organza, feathers, and total engineering of shape, harnessing the radical voluminous silhouettes the maison is known for. The opening look, extremely wide leg beige chinos and white t-shirt, with a bubble bomber and orange feathers, set the scene for the attitude PPP was sure to bring. Massive volumized cuts of ballooning sleeves blended with bubbles and plunged backs in disproportion followed.

Making the house’s signature trompe l’oeil his own, PPP used a 3D scanning body technique to invent a mannequin for stretching leathers, and included Amsilk, a sustainable, renewable engineered silk created by DNA editing and protein infusion, that is reported to be 2.5 times the strength of steel.

Alongside PPP’s debut walked Gigi Hadid, making her own haute couture debut, sporting a massive black feathered bird’s nest torso, with huge forest green palazzo pants — her face peeking out like the seed head of a sunflower. Models of all shapes and sizes strutted from the steps, dripping in lavished bright pinks, oranges and mint, opulent flowery veils, seductive black gloves, and deep V-cut necklines.

The closing look — a slouching white high-neck gown, with an extended ballooned train — hinted at the surprise in store for the spectators, as PPP took with him the entire atelier (the most important part of any haute couture week), sporting white scientist coats, to join him for his bows. If PPP brought revolution to Valentino, he is sure to bring a monstrous, transitional upheaval to Balenciaga.

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER by Duran Lantink

For most, the industrial basement of the Musee du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac is hardly the ideal location to stage a debut haute couture show. Duran Lantink is not most.

The first designer to take a permanent position at Jean Paul Gaultier since Gaultier himself left in 2020, Lantink opted for weird and wonderful creations to display his personality at the brand. Filled with displaced corsetry, french brocade, huge, over-the-top silhouettes, Lantink took a bold approach to reeling in the already adventurous customers of the maison. With experimental gender-fluidity at the core of the house, the 2024 LVMH Prize winner used the likes of 3D scanning to create a torso sculpture, melted sideways onto the body. Black and white were the diarchy of the night. Specularity was the theme, with many looks prompting one unanswered question: why? Topless male models in French chausses, sheer socks, with a sole floor-length trained white bow decorating his hair, for example. Lantink need not give an answer. As is the Gaultier way.

FENDI by Maria Grazia Chiuri

To round out Paris week 1, we end far from where we began with Fendi. Quite literally — with recently appointed Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri opting for a homecourt advantage, hosting her debut haute couture collection at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderne e Contemporanea in Rome, rather than Paris.

“I decided to show in Rome rather than Paris because I wanted people to focus on Fendi as a house, not just on the show itself,” Chiuri explained during a preview of the collection early on July 9th.

Off the back of a 9 year stint at Dior, Chiuri’s debut was one hotly anticipated. Fendi and Chiuri seem to fit like a missing jigsaw piece. Both possess much in common. A Roman heritage, timeless elegance, and a tedious link to Karl Lagerfeld — to which an ode to his tenure at the maison was paid in the collection.

Chiuri, bringing her personal flair for the fluid to the once-rigid shaped tailoring of the brand, opened the show with a light, loose V-cut chevron garment — a thin emblem of the couture-gone-casual era Fendi has entered.

The looks that followed were characterised by hardly-defined shapes draping across models of all sizes, languidity at the heart. The signature MGC black and white dual-tone spanned across the collection — from tight high-waisted pants supported by pleated detailing at the stomach, with loose, ivory and gold-emboise deep-cut shirts, to the Fendi signature fur collars strangling smartly tailored trench coats. Modelled by all genders, Chiuri brought the house to contemporary heights, adorning her collection with stringy statement gold necklaces, body-hugging bias cuts, and caped patchworks of art.

As irregular as ever, Chiuri’s collection had already been criticised for being too quiet, too understated for haute couture, to which Vogue’s Nicole Phelps describes as “missing Chirui’s point”. “Craft is not an element, it’s the center of their work, probably because the house started with luggage, bags, and fur,” notes Chiuri. The craftsmanship of the elegant, intricate ornamentation metier is not understated whatsoever. The masterful fusing of the Fendi four — fur, leather, stripes, embellishment — is what made the haute couture, haute.

Credit - Spotify

The young ingénue takes to the stage. Lights come up. Crowd stirs in tizzied anticipation. Bass booms. Onto the stage she struts, ready to transport her crowd to the wonderland of her brand new album. A spotlight draws full attention to the starlet, in all her punk glory, and there she stands…in a babydoll dress?

The outrage would be unimaginable. How dare she flounce around the stage, bare legged, infantilised, begging for the world to stare at her body. “Look at me, sexualise me.” it says. And then, it didn’t matter about the music at all. All that mattered was the crowd, and the dress. The year was 1991, and a young Courtney Love centred the stage, as Hole warmed up the crowd for Mudhoney.

Fifteen years on, things remain the same: another war-mongering President sits in the Oval Office, another new technological advancement swept the network, and another young woman is the subject of a pitchfork waving smear campaign in the name of a flouncy empire waist, draping oh-so-criminally above the knee.

On May 8th, Olivia Rodrigo, budding pop sensation, danced on Barcelona’s historic Teatre Grec stage as part of Spotify’s Billions Club Live series to some 1,500 top fans, marking the first exhibition of her new epoch, an exclusive look at release her third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, ahead of its June 12th release. Accompanying her endemic energy, was a white floral hand-embellished puff-sleeve babydoll top (adorned by Rodrigo as a dress—paired with matching bloomers, and black knee-high leather boots), courtesy of Génération78, retailing at £525.

The crowd’s enamour seemed to exist only within the few-songs lasting, cacophonous daydream. The second the digital morality police had caught wind of the singer’s girly ensemble, Rodrigo was immediately indicted.

The internet jury hung unanimously. The crime? Treason against womanhood.

Within moments, the mob had mobilised, accusing the singer of “infantilisation”, dressing “like a toddler”, appealing to the male gaze, labelling her choice of outfit as nothing but “pedo bait”. One post on X in particular, now having amassed over 1 million views, asked “why is she so obsessed with lifting her dresses up to show us her panties it’s not cute, just weird”.

Just weeks before, Rodrigo sported a Chloé Pre-Fall 2026 pinky-blue lace babydoll top in the music video that launched her new chapter, drop dead. Filmed inside the lustrous Château de Versailles, the pop star is unleashed around the palace, skipping around the fantastical grandeur of the former Marie Antoinette residence, as if straight from a Sofia Coppola sugar-coated trip. To pair were matching silk bloomers and white knee-high socks, with nostalgic pink headphones covering her ears, capturing the essence of a modern-day Dauphine.

How an artist chooses to ring in their new tale is integral—with clothing often the instrument to do so. Playing into the feminine silhouette, Rodrigo’s subliminal messaging is largely a story of girlhood, a theme which runs through the album. By emulating the rose-tinted world of the likes of Coppola and Petra Collins (who directed the video), Rodrigo subtly nods at the polarity within the experience of being a young woman—the loneliness, the alienation, the melancholic reality sharply juxtaposed with the disillusion of luxury, which unravels in prose as the album progresses (cf. “All the nights I spent fighting bad thoughts in my room. Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon”, per The Cure, “Some nights can be so fucking lonely, but it’s better than begging for you to stand up for me”, per Cigarette Smoke). All of which are evidence of the starlet’s lack of mens rea to qualify such crimes. It seems the internet pundits have sorely misinterpreted Rodrigo’s artistic morals.

Rodrigo, never fearful of internet critics, defended herself against the futility of the outrage. Taking to the Popcast podcast, Rodrigo clapped back, “I’ve worn a sparkly bra and little shorts…that wasn’t inappropriate, but me fully covered up in a dress that people deem to be childlike was inappropriate. It’s like how we normalise pedophilia in our culture. It’s this rhetoric that we’re fed as little girls… ‘Don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualise your body and it’s your fault.’”

She continued, “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…You shouldn’t be responsible for some guy sexualising you in a way that was never your intention.”

The babydoll dress has long been subjugated to politicisation, though its beginnings were somewhat antithetical to the modern interpretation. Originally nightwear worn by housewives, the babydoll dress was collateral of fabric shortages during the Second World War, resulting in the signature above-the-knee silhouette.

In the 50s, Cristóbal Balenciaga took inspiration from the lingerie style and transformed it for the runway, where the loose, free-flowing fabric became known as the “Baby Doll” that soon became synonymous with Balenciaga himself. Givenchy too chose to capitalise on the style, harnessing the fluidity and movement the light fabric provided, in turning away from the rigidity of corsets.

Credit - FIT.

Fashion icons like Twiggy and Jane Birkin wore the style in the 60s, at the height of the movement for the emancipation of women. The hemlines became shorter, the fabric freer, and the message was resoundingly one of liberation and self-determination. The babydoll became a symbol of revolution, and choice.

Perhaps the babydoll’s most well-known usage was as the poster-child for the “Kinderwhore” movement in the 1990s with riot grrrl rockers redefining the dress for themselves. Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland (of whom Rodrigo has time and time again referenced, admitting to Rolling Stone in 2023 that her mother would play the Fontanelle album in her childhood), and Courtney Love of Hole, spent these years adorning Mary Janes and Peter Pan-collars with the style, telling Rolling Stone that “It was a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? thing. My angle was irony.” The 90s took the Babydoll to new heights, prancing about the stage in the so-called innocent, virginal gossamer, whilst screaming prayers of anarchy, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Sharon Tate in pink sheer babydoll by Moss Mabry in The Wrecking Crew; Courtney Love in her famous blue babydoll in 1994.

The legends of the 90s took the housewife—her bloomers and her beliefs—and flipped her on her head in moral debasement, slathered in red lipstick, smudged black liner, Jack Daniels and klonopin, of which the music did so well to accompany. It was messy and purposefully reactionary, and succeeded in riling up the terrified traditionalists who shivered in fear at such piety.

Love in particular has long been scrutinised for her choice of apparel, and seemingly jumped to support Rodrigo. Taking to Instagram Stories, Love reposted a video of a girl adorning a love hearts babydoll with the caption: “Me in my babydoll dress and bloomers watching Olivia Rodrigo get cooked by angry twitter users.”

Credit.

In recent years, the Babydoll has remained a staple on the runway, with Miu Miu’s S/S16 collection placing a translucent chiffon babydoll as its magnum opus—this time a commentary on the political extreme, with “conservatism on both the right and left in politics,” as Miuccia Prada put it. Last year’s shows saw yet another return of the silhouette to infamy, with a new spin. Chloe’s S/S25 saw a feminine approach, a demonstration of the fashion house’s romantic savoir-faire. One garment—a soft, ruffled dusty lavender babydoll—rose to quick notoriety, and was later seen on Lily Rose Depp’s cover story for Interview Magazine.

Blugirl S/S07; Interview Magazine, by Richard Kern.

Depp and Rodrigo are not the only stars reimagining this classic. Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae, and Chloë Sevigny to name a few, have all been joining in on the fun.

What is clear from all the he-said, she-said, girl who cried pedo-bait, is that without the requisite intention, there can be no crime. I can hardly see Rodrigo sitting down with stylists Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo pre-show, draping herself in the dress, powering up, taking to the stage, and having been satisfied, thinking to herself, “Ah, mission accomplished: I have successfully lured all the 50-year-old creeps with my child-like mien and doe-eyed naïvety.”

The true crime, however, is the double standard. That above all, women will always be the subject of criticism by virtue of their clothing. Women’s bodies seem to unequivocally belong to everyone but themselves.

The reality is, had Ms Rodrigo taken to the stage in a hazmat suit, adorned head to toe in protective teflon, rubber gloves and all—the criticism would’ve been that she was too safe, too conservative, a rejection of the feminist movement.

Had it been Levis 501s and a basic white tank, she would have been labelled lazy, inconsiderate, distasteful, boring. Or a nun-like habit, hemlines safely touching the floor, that no doubt would’ve been labelled Rodrigo as shy and insecure, unwilling to push boundaries. You get the picture.

No matter what a woman chooses to put on her body, there will always be someone with something to say. Too much modesty is boring. Too much skin is distracting. Women have always been the subject of slating campaigns, and the slogan is: women can never win.

Clothing has long been a primary method of subjugation used to control women. In ancient Greece and Rome, clothing told a story of virtue, with garments draped purposefully to reflect modesty and enforce the role of the woman as bearers of honor, with the lack of clothing deemed immoral, later influenced by the role of the Church—which promoted veils as symbols of piety and good character, and eventually clothing became intrinsically tied to the status of a woman’s husband. Until 1604, England relied on the Elizabethan sumptuary laws which regulated what fabrics, garments and accessories could be worn by both men and women, ushering them into opposing boxes.

The illustrious Victorian poem by Coventry Patmore, “The Angel in the House” depicts the ideal image of womanhood, prescribing virtues that became the conduit for Victorian girls, expected to adhere to “modesty, gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility, compliancy, reticence, chastity, affability, politeness”. The overarching narrative was that a woman must be seen and not heard, and her clothing too must conform so as not to raise any voices.

Melissa Campbell-Oulton of University of Nottingham, provides exemplars like the corset and petticoat as historical examples of such control, with the social expectation of tight corsetry and suffocating lacings, writing that, “The corset literally moulded the body to create a desirable image not only for men, but for female rivals…[and] entrenched…the repression of female sexuality”, ultimately in pursuit of the “perfect woman” figure.

Political theorist Erich Fromm argued that the rise of authoritarianism across the globe capitalised on the use of women’s clothing to promote conformity, where patriarchal societies enforce dress codes “whether through laws, shame, or fear – these systems regulate women’s autonomy and reinforce control over their identities and sexuality.” The Babydoll itself is an example of this, having been turned into a symbol of shame and deterrence in wearing the fashion, in fear of accusations like those made against Rodrigo. Another being both the mandatory hijab laws in Iran, and hijab prohibitions in France, both eliminating the freedom of women in removal of choice.

There has always been an obvious emphasis of controlling women through what they were allowed to wear according to their social roles. This learned predisposition has become constitutional, passed onto today’s generation, with both men and women subject to the lifelong symptoms of patriarchy, both fearing total female autonomy, The automatic reaction is to oppose female individualism, having been conditioned to live in a realm of control.

Whether it is the fight to show more skin, or to show less, women’s bodies are a scapegoat to tell women what to do and what not to do. As has Rodrigo become the scapegoat for incels on X to tell women what to wear. Just a fabricated, convenient excuse for them to speak on behalf of women, against women.

The control narrative goes somewhat undisclosed online, made covert by the guise of “infantalisation”, a (male-created) concept invented by the media mongrels to give them something else to criticise women for. “Infantalisation” became a hot topic when the Japanese Lolita movement—a street fashion trend emerging in the 1990s, inspired by “cuteness, elegance and modesty” —moved West and garnered less-than-negative sexual connotations in being mistakenly linked to the Vladimir Nabokov novel of the same name. Any woman in an outfit with even a trimming of lace, frills, ruffles, or ribbon was quickly demonised as cosplaying the young Dolores, in search of luring her Humbert.

When women are accused of committing “pedo-bait”, the rhetoric so astutely described by Rodrigo is eternalised. Letting such accusations creep into the everyday vernacular does nothing but champion internalised misogyny. The woman then, in fear of being accused of infantilising herself, will second-guess an innocent dress in favour of something “safer”. She feels guilty for her clothes and her choices, rather than attributing the guilt to the true culprit—the men who fetishise a bit of lace and cotton.

These women do not promote the sexualisation of children. They get swept up in the audacity of being themselves, expressing fashionable ideals and image experimentation, and are made to face the consequences of choice.

Quite frankly, I find it odd that this is the narrative painted: that Rodrigo is guilty—rather than turning to cross-examine the X-users who cried “pedo-bait”. I’d wager that 99% of us who saw Rodrigo in the dress would never dream of inventing such accusations. Most of us were thinking about how pretty the dress was, how good the new music sounded, how excited we were to see what she would do next. It takes some tall imagination, or some sick, deeply-rooted internal debauchery to invent such a narrative.

The Babydoll speaks volumes. A pounding, high-decibel story of rebellious subversion of expectation, girlhood and politicised liberation. Those who criticise are barren in ignorance to the fashion and historical references.

When the moral reprehensibility of Britney Spears’ baby tees and low-rise pants were called into question by the maxi dress conformists and the Evangelical babies of the Sixties fearing for the children of tomorrow, the Queen of Pop declared, “I’m not their parents.” The same can be said for Pop Princess, Olivia Rodrigo. It is not Rodrigo’s job to bestow morality upon her audience, nor is it her job to defend herself against accusations of a few sick freaks online.

My advice? Shut up and listen. The music is great. Olivia Rodrigo looked great. Sit down and keep your weirdo perversions to yourself.

It’s 2005. YouTube had barely taken its first breath. Tom Cruise was the messiah of Scientology. Brangelina was born. The world was barren of energy, trapped in the post 9/11-G.W. Bush dictatorial apocalypse. God saw our despair, saw how we thirsted for a saviour. And so, She deployed Madonna to resuscitate. Disco was the prayer, and Confessions on a Dance Floor was the angel.

Following the relative flop of her 2000 album American Life, a politicised response to Bush’s war-mongering foreign policy, Madonna was in need of yet another epic reinvention, in a battle to regain the public’s favor. Whilst nurturing two side projects—“Hello Suckers”, a film about 1920s nightclub hostess, Texas Guinan, (for which Madonna was writing the music, later used for Hard Candy), and a Candy Darling biopic—neither of which materialised, Madonna “needed a release”. 

Her leisurely respite of choice were weeks of all-nighters with producer Stuart Price, working on a new sound. She told Billboard, “When I would go to Stuart’s, and we’d go up to his loft, it was like, ‘Honey, I want to dance.’ I wanted to be happy, silly and buoyant.”

What transpired was a sound unlike anything Madonna had ever produced. It was nu-disco, a dash of EDM, hints of electropop and club—a tri-decade spanning pot of influences. Collaborating with Mirwais Ahmadzai, Patrick Leonard, and Price, the product was “ABBA on drugs”. Disco balls, 80s leotards, rainbow laser lights radiating at the ready. 

The album unravels like a DJ set, each song seamlessly blending into the next. According to Madonna, that was exactly the vision, stating it was her intention to “Make a record that you can play at a party or in your car, where you don't have to skip past a ballad. It’s nonstop.”

With samples from ABBA themselves, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Bee Gees, and Donna Summers—there was hardly an area of musical history or genre that went unincorporated. 

Confessions was transcendentally self-referrential, pondering meta questions of materialism and fame, juxtaposed under the guise of “thumping, pulsing, shimmering dance beats,” enveloped in an intense spiralling under a microscope—hence the name Confessions. 

Within the substance too, are references to the singer’s illustrious career, telling MTV’s Jennifer Vineyard in 2005, “If I’m going to plagiarize somebody, it might as well be me, right? I feel like I’ve earned the right to rip myself off.” “Get Together” interpolates Price’s rewrite of “Holiday” — “Music Sounds Better With You”; “Isaac” connects to a sped up “Frozen”; “Forbidden Love” shares its name with a song on Bedtime Stories; “Hung Up” features lyrics from Madonna’s duet with Prince, “Love Song”; “How High” includes references to “Nobody’s Perfect” and “I Deserve It” —both from Music.  

And so, following a bombshell performance opening the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards with a performance of “Hung Up” —clad in a indigo purple leather bomber, fishnets and matching leather boots—on November 9th 2005, Confessions dropped like the pulsating four-on-the-floor beat of “Disco Inferno”, to critical acclaim and cultural veneration. Billboard named “Hung Up” the most successful dance song of the decade. “Sorry” became Madonna’s 12th UK no. 1 hit, with “Get Together” and “Jump” also top 10 hits. The album peaked at no. 1 in 40 countries and the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. 

Madonna at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards.

Alan Braidwood for the BBC commented that “This is the most commercial album Madonna has made in 15 years and it’s magic.” Keith Caulfield of Billboard commented that Confessions was a “welcome return to form for the Queen of Pop.” Pitchfork’s Stephen M. Deusner noted that “Madonna again reinvents herself, and it appears she’s nearly lapped herself.” The impact of such a movement cannot be understated, nor can the recovered proliferation of Madonna.

The Confessions Tour, which ran from May to September 2006, was as prolific as the album itself, grossing over $194.7 million, rendering it the highest-grossing tour for a female artist at the time (a record now held by Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour). The show opened with Madonna being delivered to the stage in a disco ball, opening like Venus arising from Botticelli’s scallop shell, sending the crowd into a tizzied frenzy of dancepop melodrama. 

The Confessions Tour, 2006

Regardless of its success, as with the music industry, nothing comes without criticism, particularly with the concert’s performance of “Live to Tell”, which featured the saintly Madonna pinned to a cross, adorned with a crown of thorns, which drew condemnation from religious leaders. Madonna clapped back that the segment’s intention was to raise AIDS awareness, as she has consistently done throughout her career.

Christians weren’t the only religious sect with pitchforks out for Her Majesty. The album’s sole ballad, arguably, entitled “Isaac” drew criticism from a group of Israeli rabbis believing that Madonna was committing blasphemy, under a false pretence that the song was about Kabbalah scholar Yitzhak Luria (Isaac, when anglicised), when in reality, it was named for Madonna’s featured vocalist Yitzhak Sinwai, who sings background vocal hymns on the track, with references to the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, per Rolling Stone. 

Alan Light from Rolling Stone was of the opinion that “[Confessions] won’t stand the test of time like her glorious early club hits.” Evidently, Light was proven redundant, with the album certified platinum in December 2005, a month after its release, and was ranked 3rd in VICE’s 99 Best Dance Albums of All Time. In 2007, Confessions garnered the Guinness World Record for topping record charts in the most countries, securing a spot as one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century.

And now, 21 years on, Light has been proven erred once again. It seems God has been made aware of 2026’s eerie Madonna-ic coincidences with 2005. A new President at the helm to drain our energy. Madonna living back in London. Another failed biopic (this time about Madonna herself). Back in collaboration with Stuart Price after a 15 year hiatus. More ageism from the leotard-allergic internet sleuths. God has once again taken the hint, and sent Queen Madge back to Earth to deliver a New Testament—a sequel, CONFESSIONS II.

So why now? Why a reprisal, rather than a reinvention? 

Madonna’s vision, as she told Interview Magazine, was that “The world is in a very dark place and people need to dance.” Perhaps the poignant parallels with 2005 were visible to Madonna herself, and the only solution was to rehash a medicinal remedy proven successful 21 years ago. 

In said interview with Mel Ottenberg, admitting her motto while making this album was “What would David Bowie do?” and that she finds doomscrolling disturbing, Madonna confessed the new themes that accompany the familiar up-tempo, pounding BPM include her unaddressed trauma, following the deaths of her brother and step-mother, and a song of healing reconciliation with daughter Lola Leon. She said, “It’s like the script of my film. It begins with death and it ends with death, but there’s all this life in between.” Though many of the album’s songs are “confessional”, Madonna assured that others were “just joy” —seemingly just in time to shoot out her discotheque powers of healing from that conical bra. 

Madonna and Price agreed that the successor to the classic had “got to be as good as or better than [Confessions].” Ahead of Friday’s release, the early reviews are in, and as the BBC’s Mark Savage puts it, “It’s not. But it comes close”, citing the album’s lowpoints as the “Bit of flab around the middle”, but “Soars when it gets autobiographical.”

Others argue CONFESSIONS II is “her best album in 20 years”, and the freshly tiled dancefloor gives the Queen of Pop a “newfound purpose”. 

Though they may disagree with the semantics of good and bad, one opinion is resoundingly consistent throughout reviews—Danceteria is the highlight. The song, a story set in a New York 1982 fever-dream, illustrates the snipping of the velvet rope that took Madonna Ciccone to Madonna, in convincing Michael Kamins to play the demo that led to her record deal, at the Danceteria club. 

In terms of fashion, Madonna has exchanged the Confessions Tour craftsmanship of the likes of Jean Paul Gautier’s equestrian riding breeches and chiffon peasant tops, or Yves Saint Laurent’s leather boots, largely for Gucci-made fitted skirt suits and transparent slingback heels by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarrello (following her Carrington-inspired Met Gala look). 

Confessions Tour, 2006; Interview Magazine, 2026

One thing that has remained virtually identical to the antecedent is ageism and misogyny. Madonna, now 68, has long been criticised for her unabashed sexuality, including her dancing liberated in fuchsia leotards at 47 during Confessions I. In the biography Madonna: The Rebel Life, Mary Gabriel wrote that Madonna’s 1992 photobook Sex painted her through the eyes of “all the stereotypes that patriarchal society concocted for women - dutiful daughter, gamine, blond bombshell, adoring wife, bitch - in her pursuit of a new woman, a person who exercised her power freely”. 

Even when speculations ran rampant about her alleged cosmetic surgery following her appearance at the 2023 Grammy Awards for her, Madonna assured the comments were signs of “a world that refuses to celebrate women past the age of 45”. 

The lead single, “Bring Me Love”, is a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter, who, like Madonna, has been long subjected to a hate-train of anti-emancipation rhetoric towards women who are diametrically opposed to shying away from provocation in performance and songs about sex. This feature seems only necessary when the same criticisms made about Madonna over 40 years ago, are still the prayers of the hateful made about the likes of Carpenter today.

Madonna’s pursuit has eternally been one of revolution for women, encouraging them to grasp their autonomy by the discoballs, and meeting her on the dance floor to spin freely. Like Madonna puts it when describing the second chapter, “It’s hard to understand the world, but out here on the dance floor, I feel so free…It’s welcoming people back to that state of mind because everybody’s worried.” Madonna has changed, as she always does, but the one thing consistent is her refusal to comply—evident from the declaration that is so consistently glittered throughout the album, “I can be whoever I wanna be.”

The jury is still out on whether the sequel will match the notoriety of its predecessor, but what is abundantly clear from the state of things, as Madonna puts it in her interview with Vogue Italia, is that “We are isolated. I hope my record is an antidote”. Evidently, the antidote is one simple command sent from above—“Dance.”

CONFESSIONS II, Friday, July 3rd.