Boho-chic

Short floaty skirt, 2005

Boho-chic is a style of female fashion drawing on various bohemian and hippie influences, that, at its height in 2004-5, was associated particularly with actress Sienna Miller in Europe and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in the United States.

Lexicography

"Boho"

Sherlock Holmes "upon the sofa in a purple dressing gown" in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (Illustration by Sidney Padget, Strand Magazine, 1891)

"Boho" is an abbreviation of bohemian. Vanessa Nicholson (grand-daughter of Vanessa Bell, one of the pivotal figures of the unconventional, but influential "Bloomsbury Group" in the first half of the 20th century) has described it as a "curious slippery adjective". Although the original Bohemians were travellers or refugees from central Europe (the French bohémien translates as "gypsy"), the term has, as Nicholson noted, "attached itself to individuals as disparate as Jesus Christ, Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes". The writer and historian A. N. Wilson remarked that, "in his dress-sense as in much else", Winston Churchill was "pre-First World War Bohemian", his unbleached linen suit causing surprise when he arrived in Canada in 1943.

In Arthur Conan Doyle's first short story about Holmes for The Strand, Doctor Watson noted that the detective "loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul" and "remained in our lodgings in Baker-street, buried among his old books and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition..". Designer Savannah Miller, elder sister of actress Sienna Miller, described a "real bohemian" as "someone who has the ability to appreciate beauty on a deep level, is a profound romantic, doesn't know any limits, whose world is their [sic] own creation, rather than living in a box".

"Chic"

"Chic" was borrowed from French in the late 19th century and has come to mean stylish or elegant.

Elements of boho-chic

Furry gilet, Autumn 2005

The boho look, which owed much to the hippie styles of the late 1960s, became especially popular after Sienna Miller's appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in 2004, although some of its features were apparent from photographs of her taken in October 2003 and of others living in or around the postal district of W10 (North Kensington), an area of London associated with bohemian culture since the mid-1950s.

By the spring of 2005, boho was almost ubiquitous in parts of London and was invading stores in almost every British high street. Its adherents were sometimes referred to as "Siennas". Features included "floaty" skirts (notably long white ones), furry gilets, cropped jackets, large faux-coin belts, sheepskin ("Ugg") boots and cowboy boots, baggy cardigans and "hobo bags". Demand was so great that there were allegations the following year of some sub-contractors' having used cheap child labour in India for zari embroidery and beading.

The influence and exponents of boho

Sienna Miller in 2004-2005

Sienna Miller's relationship with – and, for a time, engagement to – actor Jude Law, after they had starred together in the 2004 film, Alfie, kept both her and her style of dress in the media headlines during 2004-2005. Later, the ending of the relationship seemed to signal that boho too was past its peak. In fact, as early as May 2005 Sunday Times Style had declared that "overexposed" white peasant skirts were "going down" and had advised adherents of boho to "update your boho mojo" by mixing the look with metallic items (anticipating so-called "boho-rock" in 2006) or with layers. By the end of 2005, Miller herself had adopted other styles of dress and her shorter, bobbed hairstyle – ironically a feature of bohemian fashion in the quarter century before World War II – helped to define a new trend in 2006. She was quoted in Vogue as saying "no more boho chic ... I feel less hippie. I just don't want to wear anything floaty or coin-belty ever again. No more gilets ...".

"Folk" look of 2007

In the autumn of 2006, The Times' style director Tina Gaudoin observed that "when the women's wear buyer at M[arks] & S[pencer] is quoted saying "boho is over", you know the trend is well and truly six foot under." Even so, the so-called "folk" look of spring 2007, with its smock tops and flunce hemmed dresses, owed much to boho-chic, while embracing such trends as the re-emergence of the mini-dress: as the Sunday Times put it, "if you are still bemoaning the passing of the gypsy look, then the folk trend could be your saving grace" . The Sunday Times cited the 1960s singer Mary Hopkin as influencing the use of bandannas , while, around the same time, Sienna Miller's appearance as 1960s "starlet" Edie Sedgwick in the film Factory Girl positioned her once more as a bohemian style icon.

Sienna Miller or Kate Moss?

Some, including actress Lindsay Lohan, attributed the boho look to supermodel Kate Moss (who in 1997 had been associated, through an advertising campaign for Calvin Klein, with the so-called "heroin chic" or "waif" look). In fact the Australian journalist Laura Demasi used the term "boho-chic" as early as October 2002 with reference to Moss and Jade Jagger (daughter of Mick Jagger, of the Rolling Stones, and Bianca Jagger). In April 2004, the British-born fashion writer Plum Sykes was quoted as saying of a lynx mini-top, "Very cool, very bohemian, very Kate Moss–y"; and in 2006 Times fashion editor Lisa Armstrong described a plaited leather belt of the previous year as a "Boho 'Kate' belt". Nevertheless, it was the apparently unaffected ease with which Sienna Miller carried off the look that brought it into the mainstream: even in advertisements for Chloé early in 2005 Miller was shown as if casually shopping.

The appeal and impact of boho

The cross-generational appeal of boho helped, among other things, to influence the ranges that brought about a revival in the fortunes of Marks and Spencer in 2005-2006. An illustration of this, just as boho as such was nearing its end, was M&S's use of 1960s' icon Twiggy and younger models such as Laura Bailey ("the natural choice for the season's bohemian chic") for a major advertising campaign in late 2005. In 2006 the Sunday Times identified fur gilets and "ugg-a-likes" as preferred winter wear for middle-aged women it described as the "botox-and-better-sex-after-40 brigade".

File:Furry boots.JPG

Faux sheepskin boots, 2005

In their differing ways, British singers Joss Stone and Rachel Stevens were both held up as exemplars of boho. Author and critic Bruce Dessau wrote of American actress and singer Juliette Lewis that "there is something odd about [her] attractive boho-chic appearance in a stringy black vest, vintage beads and blue skirt that I cannot quite locate". Another well-judged exponent, in the second series of ITV's Murder in Suburbia (2005), was Detective Sergeant Emma Scribbins, the character played by Lisa Faulkner.

Fast fashion

The impact of boho illustrated certain broader trends in what Shane Watson referred to as "the way we dress now": that fashion was increasingly being dictated, not by the main houses, but what Watson called "the triple-F crowd" (famous and fashion-forward), of which Kate Moss, Lindsay Lohan and Sienna Miller were exemplars; that, once they had spotted new fashions, young women were not prepared to wait a season for them to become available; and that, consequently, the familiar boundaries between summer wear and that for autumn and winter were becoming blurred. As Jane Shepherdson, brand director of the clothing chain Topshop put it, "when Sienna wore that gilet, we had to pull them forward fast ... She was doing boho in the autumn, and we were expecting it to be a trend for the following spring. Girls see it and they want it immediately".

The practice of meeting such demand, pioneered by the Spanish firm Zara, and of which Shepherdson, until she left Topshop in 2006, was the leading British proponent, became known as "fast fashion".

Related trends

The Olsen twins: ashcan/bobo chic

In the United States, twin actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, especially the former, were credited with a "homeless" look, first identified as such in Greenwich Village, New York in late 2004, that had many "boho" features (large sunglasses, flowing skirts, boots and loose jumpers). This was sometimes referred to as "ashcan chic".

The term, "bobo chic" (also known as "hobo-grunge" or "luxe grunge"), had similar connotations, "bobo" (or "BoBo") being a contraction of "bourgeois" and "bohemian" coined by New York Times columnist David Brooks in his book, Bobos in Paradise (2000). Bobo chic was associated in particular with punks in the SoHo area of Lower Manhattan, to the south of Greenwich Village. It was described by a student fashion writer as "paying to look poor" and having been "made popular by silver screen stars who all look like they got dressed in the dark like the Olsen twins, Kirsten Dunst and Chloë Sevigny". A British commentator, who referred to Mary-Kate Olsen's "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to dressing", noted that, by 2006, the Olsens' merchandising empire was recording annual sales of £500 million.

A "catwalk" refinement of 2006, of which actresses Kate Bosworth and Thandie Newton were said to be exponents, was referred to as "cocktail grunge": "looking done-undone ... it's what Marianne Faithfull and Blondie would be wearing if they were young now".

French bobos

In the world of Parisian fashion, the term le bobo (short for Bourgeois Bohème), which also had political connotations, was applied to "typically discerning customers who are left wing and Left Bank" ; or, put another way, "that subset of thirty- or forty-something-year-olds who don't allow their socialist leanings to interfere with an enjoyment of material pleasures" . La gauche caviar [the caviar left] was an unflattering epithet for bobos .

The bobo style of dress has been described as "retro-hippie-shabby-chic" , its elments including jersey tops, boiled wool jackets, smart jeans, Converse training shoes and leather bags by Jerome Dreyfuss (b.1974). A leading exponent was actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, who particularly favoured the designs of Isabel Marant (b.1967). Some of the teenage rock bands, such as Second Sex and the Plastiscines, that emerged in France c. 2006 and were known collectively as les bébés rockers, were derided in some sections of the press because of their bobo backgrounds: as Kate Spicer observed in the Sunday Times, "it's as if a bunch of priviledged Islington kids had picked up their guitars and proclaimed themselves the new Sex Pistols" .

Boho-rock

By Midsummer 2006, the Sunday Times had discerned a trend that fused aspects of boho-chic with "heavy metal attitude": "It's about wearing a studded leather jacket with a flimsy chiffon number, stomping about town in biker boots ... and wearing anything with a skull on it". The newspaper referred to this style, which had been a feature of collections for Autumn 2006 by Christian Dior and John Galliano, as "boho-rock" and noted that both Sienna Miller and Kate Moss had adopted it. "Gothic rock" had similar connotations. A look described by the Sunday Times in Autumn 2006 as "modern goth" was a more stylised version, exuding a "bondage vibe" and contrasting "soft, light fabrics ... with the harsh sleekness of patent [leather]".

Bohemian roots

Spanish Gypsies, 1917 (National Geographic)

Main article: Bohemian style

Although boho-chic in the early years of the 21st century represented a definite style, it was not a "movement." Nor was it noticeably associated with bohemianism as such. A journalist, Jessica Brinton, saw it as "the tagging and selling of the bohemian dream to the masses for £5.99". Indeed, the Sunday Times thought it ironic that "fashionable girls wore ruffly floral skirts in the hope of looking bohemian, nomadic, spirited and non-bourgeois", whereas "gypsy girls themselves ... are sexy and delightful precisely because they do not give a hoot for fashion". By contrast, in the first half of the 20th century, aspects of bohemian fashion were a reflection of the lifestyle itself.

In fact, most of the components of boho had, in one way or another, drifted in and out of fashion since the "Summer of Love" of 1967 when hippiedom and psychedelia were at their peak. As journalist Bob Stanley has put it, "the late 1960s are never entirely out of fashion, they just need a fresh angle to make them de jour".

Other boho terminology of 2004-6

In advance of Glastonbury 2004, the Sunday Times coined the term "festival chic", for a style with some similarities to boho. It subsequently labelled a photographic spread of Sienna Miller, Lauren Bailey, Erin O'Connor and other muses of designer Matthew Williamson as "boho babes", advised its readers to "think art-school chic" by adopting layers of clashing colours and, in 2006, noted that "last year's boho babe" had become "this year's boho-rock chick".

The London Evening Standard referred to "hippie chic" (a term used in the 1990s with reference to the velvet kaftans created by Tom Ford for the Italian house of Gucci) in a feature about "gypsy queens", while the Sunday Times, reflecting on what "the fashion world called ... boho chic", referred to Sienna Miller's having created "the retro hippie look that swept Britain's high streets".

"Boho-by-default" was an unflattering description used by Lisa Armstrong to describe the style of women ("gargoyles" as opposed to "summer goddesses") who, for summer wear, "drag the same greying, crumpled boho-by-default mess out of storage every year".

Morocco

In 2006 the Sunday Times described the Moroccan resort and seaport of Essaouira as the "boho/barefoot-chic beach" because of its association with fashionable "Euro aesthetes worth their Talitha Getty-esque kaftans". The latter was a reference to an iconic photograph of Talitha Pol, wife of Paul Getty, that was taken by Patrick Lichfield in Marrakesh in 1969. This image was described by Lisa Armstrong as "typif[ying] the luxe bohemian look". Anticipating Glastonbury 2005, Hedley Freeman in the Guardian had recommended the wearing of headscarves to achieve "Talitha Getty chic".