Fashion wise, it is, as the editor of British Vogue observed of the silhouette du jour, “a marvellous time to be pregnant”. This was Liz Tilberis, the then editor, remarking in 1990 on a strange phenomenon that had billowed through the summer collections of that year. The ultra-feminine, wafty, high-waisted, chiffon baby doll — part male fantasy, part practical solution to post-pasta bloat — seemed to offer a 180-degree contradiction of everything that the curvy, mini-skirted power suits that had immediately preceded it represented.

She could have been talking about 2006. The baby doll is back, making it a very bad time, fashion wise, for a woman to show off her washboard abs. This time the baby doll isn’t in semi-revealing chiffon, but in all concealing thick silks, thick cottons, broderie anglaise (cotton with stamped-out holes) or duchesse satin (the stately, really thick, glossy stuff that makes an already generous puff shape even bulkier), and not as an item appropriated from the boudoir but as something that looks as though it has its roots in the nursery.

At Chloé, Louis Vuitton, Moschino, Just Cavalli, Betty Jackson, Sophia Kokosalaki, Anna Sui, Calvin Klein, Guy Laroche, Clements Ribeiro, Pucci, Lanvin, Giles and even Jil Sander (just about everyone, in other words) the baby doll, and its various permutations, cropped up. Some kind of weird collective phantom pregnancy syndrome that has prompted so many designers to produce clothes that work so well for Angelina Jolie, Gywneth and the proliferating celeb-with-child crowd? Or a pre-emptive attempt to channel Edie Sedgwick, the sad child-woman who is destined to remain one of major influences in fashion at least until the film about her is released?

Who cares? The main question is: what did it look like? Pretty much how you’d expect several hectares of stiff fabric to look — ie, like a full-blown tent at Chloé; more of an elongated wigwam elsewhere.

So why am I bothering to tell you about it? Because, as in the early Nineties, the ripple effect of the baby doll is already making itself felt far and wide. The high street chains are as replete with marquees as the car park at Royal Ascot. Young girls — so some retailers report — are delighted with a trend that allows them room to eat and follow fashion. There’s something to be said for a silhouette that’s voluminous on top but showcases the legs (don’t try wearing one with a full skirt or wide trousers), although Chloé has toned down the tented landscape effect significantly in its own boutiques, preferring to go big on pintucked shirts and gently flared dresses. Meanwhile, sales of wide belts continue to surge as women take the silhouette issue into their own hands and cinch in their loose baby-doll tops, or wear them under cropped jackets that give some kind of definition to the waist.

And another thing about the way fashion really works: in the Nineties, the baby doll promoted the wearing of leggings. It’s doing it again this time round — and giving drainpipes an extended lease of life. Just as the Nineties baby doll eventually evolved into the loose-slip-dress-worn-over-T-shirts uniform that came to dominate the post-grunge years, so this year’s baby doll is already slimming down into the 2006 version of the slip dress: a nifty tunic that can be worn over thin jumpers now, on its own when the weather warms up or with a duster coat for dressy occasions this summer.

This versatile little godsend will be even more ubiquitous next winter, in tweed, wool or tartan. Call it the updated suit, the antidote to jeans-and-cropped tops, or don’t call it anything. Just wear and enjoy.

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