The polka dot’s past is weirder than you think

The polka dot is anarchic and exuberant, classic yet effervescent. It’s expansive, offering both the comfort of familiarity and the invigorating jolt of repetition. Much depends on scale and color, of course. Tiny white dots on a black background read as arch but ladylike; multihued spots, especially if large or irregularly sized, have a more slapstick appeal.

For the past century, polka dots have been a perennial style motif, deployed by designers as different as Christian Dior and Rei Kawakubo. They’re a little formal, slightly old-timey, and quintessentially feminine: Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe liked polka dots, as does Kate Middleton. Julia Roberts, playing a sex worker trying to blend in at a polo match in the 1990 film “Pretty Woman," donned a demure polka-dot dress.

“They scatter proliferating love in the universe," said artist Yayoi Kusama, seen here at an opening of one of her polka-centered shows in 2012.

“It’s the comedian of prints," said Wes Gordon, the creative director of Carolina Herrera. Gordon has made polka dots, a Herrera signature, a constant on his runways. This spring, he dolloped them on everything from heeled mules to ruched blouses.

Marc Jacobs, another dot-mad designer, referenced both Minnie Mouse and the itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie-yellow-polka-dot bikini in his fall collection. Fellow designers and brands in the polka camp? Everyone from Batsheva Hay to Tory Burch and Moschino, Alaïa to Valentino and Nina Ricci.

A look from Carolina Herrera’s Spring 2025 runway show

“I’ve always loved them!" exclaimed Hay. “There’s this cartoon character quality to them." Moreover, she adds, dots pop on small screens, which have become the way that many consumers now shop. “My smaller patterns don’t always register. But polka dots grab people’s attention."

Their eye-catching quality, however, hasn’t always worked in their favor. In medieval times, when weavers struggled to line up a pattern evenly, polka dots (simply called spots or dots at the time) looked irregular and feeble. The result? They were associated with splotchy diseases like the plague and smallpox.

Once it became possible to print more-uniform, appealing dots, the connection to pestilence faded, though not completely. In the 1960s, DC Comics gave us Polka-Dot Man. As the story goes, the Batman-nemesis was exposed to a virus that caused him to sprout glowing, acid-filled pustules all over his body, which he expels as…polka-dot bombs. Disgusting. And yet Marx Brothers-ish?

That this pattern could transition to high-fashion status and proliferate as widely as it did was due to two technological advances of the industrial revolution: roller printing and the Jacquard loom. Roller printing, invented in Scotland in 1783, replaced more laborious methods like woodblock prints, which were hand-stamped and consequently pricey. The Jacquard loom, patented in France in 1804, automated the process of creating complicated woven patterns.

Between them, these machines let many people who could never otherwise have afforded either pattern or color build wardrobes that included both.

But it would be another four decades before the polka dot acquired its modern name. The kinetic pattern mirrored the energetic polka dance that swept Europe in the 1840s, a time of political rebellions across the continent. The fast-paced polka, which required men to—gasp!—clasp their partners’ waists, expressed the anti-authoritarian mood of the time. It was the antithesis of the aristocracy’s G-rated dances.

Merchants tried to piggyback onto the dance’s success by plastering every conceivable product, from desserts to hats, with the polka moniker. Once the craze faded, however, only the “polka dot" remained. (In what is probably the last association of the polka dot with strenuous activity, since 1975, the cyclist who takes the lead in the Tour de France’s mountainous section is awarded a polka-dot jersey.)

Like stripes or tartan, dots have a pure, graphic quality that’s flourished since they were popularized in the early 19th century. One early admirer of their uplifting zing was Jane Austen. In 1804, she wrote excitedly to her sister about 10 yards of red “spotted" muslin she planned to have made into a dress.

Which brings us back to joy. When life is stressful, we seek this quality—one of fashion’s greatest gifts—in our clothes. Creating joy was Jacobs’s aim, he said, when envisioning his fall 2024 collection. He’s also said there’s never a wrong time for a polka dot.

Gordon agrees. “Polka dots are timeless, they’re seasonless, and they’re joyful," he said. “We could all use a little joy in our lives right now."

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