There are certain obsessions that are eternal for me like swans, flowers, letters… They linger quietly in the background of my life, refusing to fade. Also in clothing, some colors (pink), or prints (animalier), never bore me. I can return to them season after season.
But then there are the other kinds of obsessions, intense, fast-burning flames. They arrive suddenly, consume everything, and then leave me exhausted, even repelled. A perfect example? The pois print! (French - à pois - "with dots" or "dotted") You probably know it as polka dots.
For a while, I adored polka dots. They felt playful, light, even a bit surreal. They reminded me of dalmatian dogs, ladybugs.
I loved them. Until I didn’t.
When I entered the rockabilly scene, I found myself suddenly surrounded by them. The pattern was everywhere, it had become the visual shorthand for a whole era. It made sense: polka dots exploded in popularity in the 1940s and 50s, worn by pin-up icons and popularized by Christian Dior’s New Look. But to me, they started to feel forced. What was once joyful began to feel like a costume, and eventually, even ladybugs lost their charm.
For a long time, I couldn't stand polka dots. I stopped wearing them, stopped even looking at them. But now… something strange is happening.
Recently, I noticed that when I see something dotted, something inside me lights up. I feel a little thrill. I’m starting to like them again. Why? How?
This back-and-forth confused me, so I started digging.
And I found something curious: I have trypophobia - a sensitivity to clustered holes or dots, which can cause discomfort, anxiety, or even nausea. It’s not a medically recognized phobia in the strict sense, but it’s real enough that images of honeycombs, coral, or lotus seed pods make my skin crawl. And while polka dots are tidy, organized, staring at them too long, especially in large, dense groupings, can trigger that same itchy, unsettling feeling.
In earlier centuries, irregular spots were associated with illness and contamination, bubonic plague, rashes. Spotted fabric was once taboo. It wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries, when printing and weaving techniques improved, that evenly spaced dots became fashionable, no longer signs of disease, but symbols of order and joy.
And maybe that’s what keeps pulling me back. There’s something deeply satisfying about the order of polka dots, rhythmic, balanced, cheerful. They give me a sense of control. Maybe that’s why I get obsessed. But perhaps, ironically, it’s also that very repetition that tips me into discomfort. I cross some invisible line, from pattern to overwhelm, from beauty to dread. I feel that today, after too much research, like I’ve stared too long into an infinity mirror.
That reminds me of Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist whose entire world is dots. For her, dots aren’t decorative - they’re cosmic.
“Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos.”
Her dot obsession is a response to trauma, hallucinations, and a desire to obliterate the boundaries of self, to become part of the infinite. Her work is unsettling and hypnotic, full of emotional charge. Maybe dots carry more than visual weight, maybe they touch something primal.
Isabella Ducrot - not as “visibly obsessed” with dots as Yayoi Kusama, Ducrot’s use of dots is meditative and structural, almost musical. Like the pause between musical notes or the empty spaces in woven fabric, her dots feel like silences, part of a rhythm of presence and absence.
“I am fascinated by repetition because it does not tire me - it comforts me.”
Or maybe it’s that simple: the dot is the shape of the sun, the source of life. It rises, it sets. It’s always vanishing and returning.
Like obsessions.
Like polka dots.
Anyway, this is me trying to understand it. Trying to figure out why I both love and resist this pattern so fiercely. Sharing this little dot-obsessed spiral with you feels like a release.
Instagram dotted finds:
A pattern that once delighted me, then drowned me in clichés, only to rise again, curious, full of rhythm and contradiction. I loved them, I wore them, I turned away. I researched, reimagined, reconciled. And now, after pouring my thoughts into this little dotted spiral of an article…
I think I might hate them again.
But maybe that's what pois are meant to do:
seduce, overwhelm, vanish, then return.
Just like the dot. Just like the sun.
Until next time.