The polka dot’s past is weirder than you think

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Can a pattern make you happier? Yayoi Kusama thinks so. Of polka dots, her signature motif, the spot-obsessed Japanese artist wrote: “They scatter proliferating love in the universe and raise my mind to the height of the sky." 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.