Chunky, layered jewelry and fringe blouses paired with leopard prints and tribal patterns have powered through the moodboards of influencers and fashion houses, in attempts to ride the wave of nostalgia accompanying the revival of ‘boho chic’. You’ve seen it on Kate Moss, Hailey Beiber, and the Olsen Twins – now, it’s being repackaged as part of the indie sleaze resurgence amongst teenagers and young adults. Bohemian style is often categorized by the aesthetics of a traveler, whose style is curated by the influences and artifacts that surround them. It requires an inclination of edginess, and as fashion designer Isabel Marant describes it, “boho is an attitude, a strength, and this power that comes from how you put things together” (Bobb, 2024). However, with its current execution in fashion media, I question the authenticity of boho’s resurgence. What allows it to differentiate itself from the likes of being a trend, like the ‘clean girl aesthetic’, and an actual movement of innovation in fashion? The answer is that the differentiation doesn’t exist. Boho chic’s return exemplifies the recycling that occurs within fashion, but more so the tendency of social and cultural trends to recycle throughout history. From a modern lens, much of today’s fashion ‘do’s and don’ts’ are dictated by social media’s gavel on style and beauty, which encompasses the social conditioning techniques utilized by industries with a stake in fashion. Specifically, there is a current level of artifice within these industries that I believe stunt the development of fresh trends for emerging young adults.
Looking at supermodel Bella Hadid’s influence on trends within fashion, named as one of the early pioneers to boho chic’s revival, one of many techniques is employed. One is able to admire Bella’s style through the various paparazzi images that circulate of her doing everyday tasks, like grocery shopping, while wearing simple yet elevated, era-defined, outfits. I would describe this branding occurrence through Graeme Turner’s analysis of celebrity as representation, where celebrities produce “a semiotically rich body of texts and discourse that fuel a dynamic culture of consumption” (Turner, 2010). A promotional photoshoot for Bella’s fragrance ‘Orabella’ and a series of paparazzi pictures showcasing her in an archival Valentino blouse and bell bottoms while holding her perfume, becomes a string of profitable opportunities for all involved (Ifteqar, 2024). It casts attention to her perfume, as she attempts to break into the fragrance industry, while simultaneously showcasing her outfit, promoting the work of her stylist, and Valentino’s clothing. This formula was similarly used when Bella stepped out in a Valentino ‘Nellcôte’ fringe bag, instantly making headlines within fashion publications declaring her announcement of a new ‘it-bag’. As with her image marking facets of fashion, it synchronously contributes to Turner’s association of celebrity as an industry, where “celebrity becomes a product… the ‘celebrity-commodity’ can be manufactured, marketed, and traded” (Turner, 2010). In Bella’s case of “celebritization” pushing boho chic’s reestablishment into mainstream fashion, she is given greater agency to dress as she pleases. Her influence stems from the power of celebrity as cultural formatters, where celebrities have “a social function” participating “in the field of expectations that many, particularly the young, have of everyday life” (Turner, 2010). Bella’s glamor and image of having an effortless fashionableness is an instrumental part of the cultural formation that is visible in other celebrities and influencers who’ve pushed the same principles of fashion - whether backed by industry incentives or curating their own audience via an online presence.
Boho chic being ushered into the limelight of fashion for the new generation is representative of the standardization and pseudo-individualism that is essential to the capitalist prosperity of fashion corporations and corporate giants with a say in trends. The nicheness and origins of boho chic allow it to stray away from automatic detection as a trend, especially with how “in the culture industry the notion of genuine style is seen to be the aesthetic equivalent of domination” (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1944). The false sense of ‘domination’ consumers receive with their clothing purchases, allowing them to be the ‘first’ to jump on boho chic’s return, is a modern display of the social hierarchy that industries weld their consumers into. Industries, like consumers, rely on this hierarchy, “since all the trends of the culture industry are profoundly embedded in the public by the whole social process, they are encouraged by the survival of the market in this area”. What I find to be most harmful in the practice of re-trending fashion is that the “constant sameness governs the relationship to the past as well”, promoting “the exclusion of the new” (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1944). By making less efforts to acquire new styles and garner a current culture rather than relying on the past, companies are able to do less work when it comes to innovation within fashion. Boho chic had an irreplicable meaning behind it as a contrast from the endured fashion of the ‘90s entering the 2000s, which raises concerns of its reappearance and relevance today. I would argue that this behaves as no coincidence, as companies employ methods of modern “cool-hunting”, that essentially “glorifies difference, which depends on stratification, exotification, and the rigidification of cultural dissimilarity” (Powers, 2019). In other words, boho chic’s trending in 2024 acts as a performance of nostalgia immersing itself into culture, a process not exclusive to Gen Z, but with a new veil of inauthenticity rooted in the corporate influences and motives behind its materialization.
The subculture of fashion enthusiasts and those with a cultural attachment to bohemian modes of beauty and stylistic efforts often clash with those of consumers. Their newfound interest in the style fails to see beyond the materialistic pieces that personify the fashionable significance of boho chic. It doesn’t take a fashion nerd to realize that the new imitation of boho is not only a profitable expenditure for those selling style, but a recurring phenomenon of trend repetition throughout history.
References
Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1944). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. Marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm
Bobb, B. (2024, September 26). Boho Chic Is Back. Again. How Did We Get Here? Harper’s BAZAAR. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/designers/a62349991/boho-chic-fashion-trend-resurgence-explained-2024/
Ifeqtar, N. (2024, August 27). Bella Hadid is Taking Her Boho-Chic Muse Status Into the Fall Season. Vogue Arabia. https://en.vogue.me/fashion/bella-hadid-boho-chic-valentino-blouse-bell-bettom-jeans-fall-season/
Powers, D. (2019) On trend: The business of forecasting the future.Chapter 3. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press
Turner, G. (2013). Is celebrity news, news? Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 15(2), 144–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884913488719
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