Boho-chic
Boho-chic is a style of fashion drawing on various bohemian and hippie influences, which, at its height in late 2005 was associated particularly with actress Sienna Miller, model Kate Moss in the United Kingdom and actress/businesswoman Mary-Kate Olsen in the United States. It has been seen since the early 1990s and, although appearing to wane from time to time, has repeatedly re-surfaced in varying guises. Many elements of boho-chic became popular in the late 1960s and some date back much further, being associated, for example, with pre-Raphaelite women of the mid-to-late 19th century.
Luxe grunge may be a synonym; a chicer updated grunge-boho collection with an unkempt approach to wardrobe. First motivated by Seattle's groundbreaking rock scene in the 1990s – the modern update contains all the mainstays of yesterday's grunge alongside today's sophisticated pieces, including capes, shawls and jackets. Grunge elements featured strongly in fashion collections in Autumn 2006, including styles referred to "cocktail grunge" and "modern goth". Lisa Armstrong, fashion editor of the London Times, referred to Patrick Lichfield's iconic 1969 photograph of Talitha Getty on a Marrakesh roof-top as "typif the luxe bohemian look"
Lexicography
"Boho"
"BoHo" is a shortened form of bohemian, self descriptive of the style.Virginia Nicholson has described it as a "curious slippery adjective". Although the original Bohemians were inhabitants of central Europe, the term has, as Nicholson noted, "attached itself to individuals as disparate as 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". 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 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
The boho look, which owed much to the hippie styles that developed in the middle to 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, 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", this eponym even being applied to Miller herself: "Sienna's Sienna-ishness", as Jessica Brinton put it in the Sunday Times in 2007. Features included "floaty" skirts, furry gilets, embroidered tunics, cropped jackets, large faux-coin belts, sheepskin 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.
Footless tights or "leggings", of which Miller was a proponent, were a contributory factor in the halving of sales of stockings in Britain between 2003 and 2007.
Trends
Sienna Miller in the mid 2000s
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 2004–05. In December 2004, Vogue featured Miller on its front cover and described her as "the girl of the year". Later, the ending of her relationship with Law seemed to signal that boho too was past its peak. In fact, as early as May 2005 the Sunday Times Style magazine 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 or with layers. By the end of 2005, Miller herself, who claimed later that her boho look was not very original – "I think I'd just come back from traveling or something" – 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 2007. 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...". Even so, in 2008, Miller reflected that2007–08: folk, "diluted", and Balearic boho
In the autumn of 2006, The Times' style director Tina Gaudoin observed that "when the women's wear buyer at M & S 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 flounce 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. London Lite observed in May 2007 that:You may baulk at the very word, but this summer's style has definite nuances of boho – albeit in a very diluted form. Sienna Miller's gipsy skirt brigade somehow didn't finish this feminine trend off for good, and some of the less contrived ingredients – embroidery, leather, gentle frills – are back
Noting that "this time it's much more about a deconstructed, looser version of English Country Garden style", London Lite recalled the early 1970s designs of Laura Ashley – "all folds of floral cotton and centre partings". Actresses Mischa Barton and Milla Jovovich were cited as exponents of this look, while Jade Jagger was said to be promoting her own style of "Balearic boho" on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, a long-time haven for beatniks and hippies who colonised the village of Sant Carles in the 1960s.
The Tatler wrote of Jagger – "the original 'Boho'" – that she "lives, breathes and creates a certain kind of contemporary "bohemian" chic", although Jagger herself claimed to be "a little wary of the word "bohemian"", describing her approach as "daring to mix... combining things that are unexpected". Jagger modelled for designer Matthew Williamson, whose style has been described as combining "Ibiza glamour" with "London cool". Sienna Miller has written that, when she first met Williamson, whose muse she became, in her mother's kitchen in 2001
she had a magazine on the table with Jade Jagger wearing the most beautiful bright dress I had ever seen. I remember thinking it was my dream dress. I now feel that way about almost every dress of Matthew's I have worn".
In 2011 "destination dressing" for Ibiza was still deemed to "embrace boho chic with a hint of understated glamour"
When, in August 2007, Sienna and Savannah Miller launched their own fashion label, Twenty8Twelve, one commentator referred to Sienna's "own brand of Notting Hillbilly chic" and remarked that, "with love of all things boho, it's unsurprising to see a thread of louche, folksy styling running through the line". However, the same writer observed wryly that "quite how many French peasants hoed fields in printed smocks is undocumented" and felt that one particular shirt-dress was "a little too reminiscent of Nancy in Oliver Twist". The following year, the Sunday Times, noting that one in two Americans and one in five Britons were reportedly sporting tattoos, observed that Miller "complete her luxe-layabout look with a cluster of stars on her silken shoulder"; that she had also a tattoo of a bluebird, the subject of both a poem by Charles Bukowski and a drawing by Edie Sedgwick; and that Kate Moss displayed "two swallows diving into her buttock crack".
Recession of 2008–10: ''broderie'', exotic lingerie, 70s glam/beatnik
In 2008 fashion consultant Gok Wan cited a broderie anglaise top worn by Nadine Coyle of the group Girls Aloud as evidence that "the folk/boho look is so hot for summer", while Marks & Spencer employed the headline "Bohemian Rhapsody" to summarise its summer range, which owed much to the colours and patterns of the early 1970s. At the beginning of June that year fashion writer Carrie Gorman announced that "this week, shopping is about going bright and bold with a boho feel", citing, among other trends, multi-coloured tank tops by Harlow, said to be the favorite label of American actress Rachel Bilson. Bilson has cited Kate Moss and actress Diane Keaton as among her stylistic influences; striped multi-colored panties with brodierie edging were a feature of her photographic shoot for Stuff magazine in 2004.Another, rather distinctive, exponent of the "vintage" look was actress and singer Zooey Deschanel, who, in June 2008, appeared on the front cover of the magazine BlackBook in a black lace-edged swimsuit. In the same year, a journalist wrote of Deschanel:
Deschanel's "kooky" style subsequently found a popular outlet as Los Angeles teacher Jess Day, whom she played in the Fox TV sitcom, New Girl. Jess's fashion preferences, including some striking brassières in a range of colours, attracted much interest, while, around the same time, Anastasia Steel's tastes in E. L. James' best-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey were thought to have assisted sales of exotic lingerie. Blue was a favoured color and was Ana's own preference: "I'm in the pale blue lacy perfect-fit bra. Thank heavens". In 2010, the winning German entry for the Eurovision Song Contest proclaimed, "I even did my hair for you/I bought new underwear, they're blue". In 2013 X Factor contestant Diana Vickers wore blue panties for a widely publicised photoshoot for the magazine FHM.
Although boho once again appeared to be on the wane by 2009, elements of it were clearly in evidence in collections for spring and summer 2010. Fashion Union advertised "spring's new bohemian trend in full bloom" and "hippie chic tops on loveworn denims", while Avon introduced a perfumed spray called "Boho Chic". Monsoon, founded in 1973 and still described by the Sunday Times in 2010 as "the boho chic fashion retailer", saw its pre-tax profits rise dramatically during the recession of the late noughties: from £3.6 million in 2008 to £32.6 million in the year to August 2009.
In 2010 the Sunday Times anticipated that the medieval head chain – "a step on from the hippie head band" – would be a feature of that year's festival circuit, "instantly adding summer bohemia to your look". Socialite Nicole Richie's "beatnik/disco-glam mash-up" was cited as an example of this trend, while Peaches Geldof, model and daughter of rock musician Bob Geldof, was identified as another who had adopted the look. Later in the year the Sunday Times lauded the "haute hippie, bohemian splendour and punked up classics" that were putting "a modern spin on 1970s style". These included a cream crochet dress by Marc Jacobs and a devoré dress and fringed scarf by Pucci.
By the late autumn of 2010 The Times noted the desirability in the UK of fake fur, with Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury's TU retailing bestselling coats at a time of economic stringency. According to Lisa Armstrong, "everyone from Kate Moss to Alexa Chung, Fearne Cotton to Kylie , Rachel Bilson and Taylor Momsen to Carine Roitfeld ha been swaddling themselves in exotic cat prints with varying degrees of success". Armstrong speculated also that the "Impossible Boot", based on a 1930s snow boot and so-called by its designer Penelope Chilvers because it had "proved a headache to make", might, despite its relatively high cost, displace the Ugg, which had been a durable boho accessory. As Armstrong put it wrily, the Impossible was "perfect for après-ski" in the fashionably bohemian London districts of Primrose Hill or Dalston.