5 Times Sabrina Carpenter Slayed Doll-Core Fashion

Step into the doll's house. In 2025, Pinterest predicts the world will shrink itself to toy box proportions — all in the name of doll-core. "People will be inspired to look at life from their very own doll's house," the platform proclaimed, forecasting a societal turn toward doll-style makeup, cute interiors, and whimsical accessories.

Doll-core stretches across an eclectic spectrum: Victorian gothic melancholy, muted kawaii sweetness, and Barbie-esque exuberance. The fashion world has already begun to lean into the fantasy: John Galliano's Maison Margiela Spring 2024 couture featured models transformed into porcelain dolls with jolting, marionette-like strides. Months later, Marc Jacobs celebrated his 40th anniversary with a life-sized doll's house runway, furnished with oversized tables and chairs. Having indulged in Barbie pink and Brat green, this evolution feels almost inevitable. As the phrase "I'm just a girl" reverberates through the social media zeitgeist, we can clearly see a culture transfixed with hyper-feminine archetypes, gazing intently into the looking glass.

One undeniable champion of doll-core is Sabrina Carpenter. Through her Old Hollywood-inspired style transformation, the pop star has transformed herself into a living doll, embracing dainty silhouettes, exaggerated makeup, and theatricality at the heart of the trend. Her playful costumes and delicate, dramatically stylized features have made her the pin-up for an aesthetic that celebrates both artifice and nostalgia. Whether on stage or in front of the camera, her performative girlhood is spinning through the trend cycle like a music-box ballerina doll. And at just 5 feet tall, she's almost small enough to be one. 

No doll's house is complete without its miniature furniture, so NPR's Tiny Desk concert was the perfect home for Sabrina Carpenter's doll-core aesthetic. 

The "Espresso" singer conveyed the trend in a pleated, baby blue minidress — an aptly-named babydoll dress, to be precise. Paired with matching lace garters, the ensemble distilled three of the aesthetic's central facets. Firstly, it gestured to the whimsical, unfinished fantasy of childhood dress-up. Second, its pastel hue whispered of the soft palettes of early years. And third, it played into the subversive undercurrent that modern doll-core flirts with; purity is deliberately offset by provocation. 

Her retro hairstyle channeled the perfect tresses of vintage and porcelain dolls, whilst her rosy cheeks, pink lips, and wide-eyed look completed the doll-like illusion. The look was a textbook example of the trend.

At the Governors Ball in 2024, Sabrina brought a tongue-in-cheek, butter-wouldn't-melt charm to the stage, wrapped in pastel yellow. Her corset-style bodice and short skirt, adorned with glittering embellishments, leaned fully into doll-core's ornamental hyper-femininity, the coy peekaboo heart accent at the chest reinforcing the fantasy.

Here, we see Sabrina in her footwear of choice: her now-signature platform boot. Not only do these shoes provide the practicality needed for her onstage choreography, their exaggerated proportions also contribute to the surreal, almost caricature-like elements of doll-core. Many fans compared them to Polly Pocket accessories, likening her to the fun-sized icon of 90s nostalgia — a clever tie-in to the generation who grew up with these toys and are now leading the charge in embracing doll-core's aesthetic. The frilly socks, too, echo the youthful detailing often seen in classic dolls outfits.

Dressing up in doll-core for Halloween, Sabrina Carpenter seemed to be stepping straight out of a fairytale. A kittenish lilac corset gave way to a ruffled, flouncy skirt – much like the tiered traditional of classic doll's dresses. Dainty pastel bows paid homage to doll-core's beloved predecessor: the cherished coquette aesthetic, celebrated in the 2020s for its preservation and spectacle of highly-stylized girlhood. The sparkling tiara brought the spellbinding allure of childhood princess dolls to life, while the purple tones enhanced the enchanting, storybook charm of her Rapunzel-inspired get-up.

"I'm a Barbie girl in a Vogue World," is what we imagine Sabrina was singing as she took to the Jacquemus runway at the magazine's celebrated summer spectacle in Paris. Her red and white striped ensemble instantly conjured memories of the original 1959 Barbie in her seminal swimsuit – a design that debuted the doll as the ultimate symbol of mid-century aspirational femininity. The look also gestured towards Barbie's Candy Striper designs of the 1960s, but with its suggestive cutouts and fitted silhouette, Carpenter's nostalgia felt firmly balanced with contemporary sensibilities.

The addition of a tied head scarf over voluminous blonde curls further amplified the 1960s references, recalling Barbie's penchant for the accessory during her early fashion heyday. As reported in Vogue Business, the moment drove $9.6 million in Market Impact Value — the metric used in the industry to gauge how much media coverage and public attention contribute to a brand's visibility.

Sabrina Carpenter's Lollapalooza costume saw a chromatic revival of Barbie pink — a doll-core staple with a rich history. This electric pigment first dominated Barbieland in the 1970s, with Mattel adopting it to appeal to the burgeoning pre-teen girl market. The shade soon became inseparable from the doll's identity, and by the 1990s, Barbie's universe was awash in Pantone 219C. Leatrice Eiseman, Director of the Pantone Color Institute, called it a "hot pink, a close descendant of the 'mother color' red, taking on some of the dynamism, energy and theatrical aspect of red, but tempered somewhat so that it is not quite as aggressive" (via New York Times). 

And Sabrina Carpenter's outfit delivered just that. The cropped halter top and short, asymmetrical skirt seemed plucked directly from a doll's wardrobe, their playful proportions totally leaning into the doll-core ethos. The glossy sheen seemed to mimic the plastic perfection of Barbie herself, and once again, we see the platform boots animating her Polly Pocket pageantry.