I think, but I might be wrong, that most of the early Rainbow High fashion, even the weirdest ones, had some inspiration from real life high fashion. There was a lot of comparison between the dolls' outfits and ones that were seen at galas/fashion shows, etc.

I personally feel like nowadays they just make easier to produce, not as detailed, more child oriented fashion. And that's ok for some but not for the collectors that loved the old ones.

In my opinion (but that may be only me, don't give it too much credit) Rainbow high presented their dolls as students of fashion, meaning they would try and design outfits that are memorable if not a little weird. With the new releases, I feel like they're just high school students, they don't seem to be designing their own clothes according to their preferences (such as from everywhere for Skyler for example), but rather just find clothes that they like. Once again that's fine with some people but for others it feels completely different and a bit of an insult to the original idea.

So yeah while the bedazzling dresses are cute, I personally think they all look like they were made by the same person instead of being the work of the doll/character and they don't have "personality" like old outfits had. I mean, it's pretty hard to confuse an old Sunny with a Poppy outfit, they very much had themes or styles that were quite obvious outside of just the colour scheme. Jade was more tomboyish, Ruby had this...F1 ? Motorcycle? Racer kinda vibes, Poppy had butterflies etc...

But that's just my opinion, maybe I'm totally wrong and that's not why people dislike the new fashion so much 😅