The Smithsonian Magazine points out that “the march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid.” Both pink and blue-colored clothes, along with other pastels, were used for babies’ clothing in the mid-19th century. However, it wasn’t until the First World War that the colors became assigned to specific genders. In 1918, it was the general view that pink was a color meant for boys while the more “delicate and dainty” blue, according to one publication by Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department, was meant for girls.

The trend to dress boys up in pink continued. In 1927, Time magazine suggested that parents do just that. Things changed in the 1940s after manufacturers and retailers began establishing styles. Historian Jo B. Paoletti from the University of Maryland told the Smithsonian Magazine that “it could have gone the other way” very easily.

Opinions toward gendered clothing began shifting once again in the 1960s and 1970s as the women’s liberation movement gained more and more traction. And then they changed once again in the 1980s as some mothers “rejected the unisex look for their own daughters” after having grown up without feminine clothes and styles themselves.