For years, stripes have been the thinking fashion person’s choice. The style equivalent of remembering to charge your phone overnight. Bracing like sea air, with a top note of French intellectualism. In stripes, you can captain a ship and feast on oysters.

Spots and dots are much less serious. From a distance, they could be smiley face emojis. Spots bounce and dance, whereas stripes are rigid. They are spontaneous and giddy, where stripes are rational. The polo scene in Pretty Woman, when Julia Roberts wears that chocolate polka dot dress, is an iconic fashion moment not just because it’s a great dress, but because the dress itself does so much storytelling. Those polka dots set Roberts apart as vivacious, adorable. The buttoned-up crowd around her does not stand a chance.

Right now, spots are having the last laugh. The print once dismissed as less serious than stripes now feels more culturally relevant than the one that spent decades symbolising authority. Spots are on catwalks, on celebrities, on red carpets, in street style and all over the algorithm. The fashion pendulum, which for so long swung firmly in favour of stripes, has landed decisively in dot territory.

Neither spots nor stripes have a glamorous backstory. In medieval times, spotted fabrics evoked disease and contagion. Anything mottled or speckled carried uncomfortable echoes of plague and pox, so being covered in spots was not so much a fashion aspiration as a medical emergency. Stripes, meanwhile, had an image problem of their own, as the preserve of outsiders: prisoners, executioners, pirates. The stripe was a visual warning sign.

Both spots and stripes began as marks of shame, but fashion loves a redemption arc. Stripes rehabilitated themselves over the centuries. Nautical stripes acquired heroic associations. Bankers co-opted them to bring masculine vigour to the office. From school ties to business shirts, stripes emerged as a pillar of the establishment, reassuringly boring, the backbone of the working wardrobe.

Spots took a different route, becoming coded as feminine. If stripes belonged to businessmen and sailors, spots were for starlets and sweethearts. They suggested flirtation and charm. Minnie Mouse and flamenco dancers. A sense that getting dressed can be enjoyable rather than just functional. Artists from Roy Lichtenstein to Damien Hirst to Yayoi Kusama have endorsed the beauty of spots. (I love what Kusama says of them: “A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm.”) If a striped shirt says “I have a spreadsheet”, a spotty dress says “I have a story.”

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Recent history has favoured the stripe. Striped button-downs for work. Rugby shirts for weekends. But as fashion emerges from minimalism and quiet luxury, stripes are making way for spots. Frivolity is prized again. Note, for instance, how the word “cute” is used these days as a catch-all compliment – not just a cute outfit, but a cute evening, or a cute recipe idea. Cuteness, which used to be for children, pets and stationery, is now an aspirational aesthetic.

Just as the stripe had range – from existential Bretons to cheerfully bright deckchair bands – so does the spot. A tiny polka print can be Princess of Wales coded, while a giant dot has an avant garde Comme des Garçons vibe. The old order pitched stripes (capable) against spots (delightful), but it turns out that a spot can go both ways. And fashion no longer asks us to choose between competence and personality quite so rigidly.

The modern wardrobe is less keen on broadcasting authority than individuality, which might be why spots feel right for now. They can be witty or rebellious or refined. The smart money is on not taking yourself too seriously.

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Model: Maria Diaz at Milk. Styling assistant: Charlotte Gornall. Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Ouai and Lisa Eldridge beauty. Top, £29.99, and trousers, £39.99, both Zara. Bag, £40, Marks and Spencer. Shoes, £45, Topshop. Earrings, £22, Accessorize