The feud & the fury regarding the "baby doll" style of dress is reported to have started in the early/mid 90's with Kat Bjelland of Babes In Toyland fame and Courtney Love of Hole both claiming to have "invented" the image/look/style.

Some information taken from Everything2.com and updated.

Often tied in with the riot grrrl movement though not exclusively, kinderwhore's look of thrift store baby doll dresses and garish red smeared lipstick was also a huge influence on what was soon to be termed the grunge era.

Courtney Love herself has stated that the look was inspired by Christina Amphlett, singer of the 1980's rock group The Divinyls.

Listen to an mp3 of Courtney which was left on an answering machine of the singer of the band The Muffs stating that Kat stole the "dress" from her and that she copied it from Christina Amphlett of The Divinyls.

The Muffs - Love

Told in the recently released autobiography "Pleasure and Pain" by Chrissy Amphlett, Chrissy adopted the schoolgirl, babydoll look to help herself become more alive on stage. When she first started The Divinyls she was shy and reserved, often hiding at the back of the stage or under her now infamous fringe. After seeing Angus Young at an AC/DC concert in full fling at a show in Sydney she decided she needed a special outfit to free herself on stage too.

Her manager suggested the schoolgirl outfit to her which became her signature look.

Later on she realised she didn't need the schoolgirl to perform and she adopted a more mature, sensual look, often appearing on stage in babydoll negligees. Her aggressive, furious and emotional stage show coupled with the innocent guise of a schoolgirl outfit has seen her labelled as one of the most electrifying performers ever.

Kat retorted to Courtney's claims by saying that the 1956 film Baby Doll had inspired her. "Baby Doll", portrayed by actress Carroll Baker, was a luscious blonde, around 20 years old, who laid in a crib-like bed she has long grown out of, wearing baby doll pajamas, while curled up with her thumb in her mouth.

Chrissy Amphlett appeared on the front cover of The Divinyls 1991 single Love School in a photograph which appears to have been directly inspired by the film Babydoll, wearing a old white nighty, in a similar bed and sucking on her thumb. The picture also appeared on the cover of the follow up single Make Out Alright

Courtney followed suit in the video for the 1994 Hole single Doll Parts in which she appears in an old white nightgown on a similar bed.

Kim Gordon of the band Sonic Youth also appears to have been influenced by the film Babydoll, she appears in the video for the song Bull In The Heather laying in an old white nighty in a similar crib.

Many years later, Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland would continue to argue over who had come up with the idea of the kinderwhore look. Kat claimed that Love had stolen it from her back in San Francisco. The pair's tumultuous on again off again friendship and many similarities, made it difficult to prove either way who came up with it first.

Kat Bjelland best defined kinderwhore by stating it consisted of torn, ripped Baby Doll dresses, thrift store negligees, or slips worn with slutty make-up and high leather boots. The supposed enticing girly image worked in contrast to Bjelland's small frame and extremely aggressive screaming style.

Yet when worn by Love 5'10, (towering over the 5'3 Bjelland) it looked more like an amazon-sized doll that had grown out of its' frilly "Best Sunday Dress" and ripped it to shreds.

After hearing Kat's claims that the movie Baby Doll was the inspiration for the kinderwhore look, Courtney penned songs "Babydoll" and "Good Sister/Bad Sister", which both appeared on Hole's first album, "Pretty On The Inside."

Some songs were supposedly written about Kat and featured lyrics like: "Better burn that dress sister, scar tissue blood blister, even you cannot resist her"

"Here you are sucking my energy, drill it in my good hole so that I can see, you are you are so much bigger than me"

"In the dark here I destroy what what I began what I destroy it, she's hanging in the blossom tree oh Babydoll just swings for me and wow"

Though many people have pondered over the songs Violet and Bruise Violet in a recent interview Kat has stated that the song Bruise Violet is not about Courtney and that "violet" is a muse that they both used to write about. Courtney has stated on various occaisions that Violet is actually about Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.

On the latest release by Kat Bjelland's band Katastrophy Wife there is a song titled Baby Doll. According to Kat's recently fired manager, the song contains lyrics about Courtney. The lyrics were never printed on the cd and after some time fans deciphered the wailing screeches and frenzied ranting of Bjelland:

I've got a few things to tell and it would just put you in the 'special hell'
Another cunt, another broad she loves
A girls life in the prison's not that tough/void (?)
She's got the skincare of the white, white girl
Perfect skin, cause of cinnamon infants head,
but then... I love you're stinking violets
They would gratify my bubblegum, virgin skin...

I've got special seed because
The girls disappear after five bad years
because when something thats inside you dies,
Do what you want...
but you'll want to be dead by then
Yeah, never give them diamonds in the womb
I'll give you weals that were just like the ones you said
I'll keep my slit veins, slipping the fingers in but god, you want me big, in a big holed spin

Other lyrical mentionings of the dress include:
"She screams sweet hell, in her old white nighty, so I put on my best sunday dress, Or something much less Than a crazy old doll in a crazy old dress " - Babes In Toyland, Lashes

In the wake of 1995, the kinderwhore look quickly spread across the world and was worn by many other female artists just as fierce but not as blonde as Bjelland or Love. Other women and grrl bands from the US that adopted the kinderwhore look were, LA's Kim Shattuck of The Muffs,Jennifer Finch from L7, Seattle's 7 Year Bitch, Bratmobile , NYC's the Lunachicks, Olympia, Washington's riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, while Florida's Jessicka from Jack Off Jilland Tina and Susan from San Francisco's Switchblade Symphony took a more Goth approach to the look. Across the pond in the UK, bands like Fluffy, Huggy Bearand Daisy Chainsaw's Katie Jane Garside wore their Baby Doll dresses with pride. The look even went as far as Japan where it was adopted by the band Shonen Knife. The all-female, Japanese, alternative rock trio found some success in the United States. The band cited 1960's girl groups as their main influences but it was the woman who created the kinderwhore look who gave them their style.

After the riot grrrl movement and grunge became passe, the kinderwhore look died out very quickly soon after. Kat Bjelland took a leave of absence from music after Babes In Toyland broke up to have her son Henry in 1999. The new mom adopted a new darker shorter hairstyle and less childlike/ slutty attire. Also in 1999, Courtney Love moved into acting. When Love returned to the world of music for Hole's last album "Celebrity Skin", she had dropped her controversial kinderwhore image and adopted a sleeker, more efficient, high fashion look, though controversy remains a mainstay in all others areas of her life.