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Social media—and perhaps even my own colleagues at Vogue—will have you believe that leading a bohemian lifestyle begins with purchasing pre-owned AllSaints skirts and ends with purchasing wedge platforms from Chemena Kamali’s Chloé. But here’s the thing: some of the most “bohemian” folk you will ever come across hold no regard for fashion, and will therefore be dressed in these sandals.
True bohemia—being diametrically opposed to things like technology and capitalism—does not look like flower crowns and fringed waistcoats and gladiator boots. But it might bear closer resemblance to the silken robe that Ashley Olsen wore to the 2024 Whitney Gala last night. Lime green and embroidered in lyrical and golden textures, that coat looked as though it could have been discovered in a second-hand textile store. This is, after all, the same woman who once forbade guests from capturing and sharing catwalk content from their iPhones at Paris Fashion Week, instead providing them with notepads and pencils—analogue, off-grid—to sketch the collection in real time.
Like all trends with a searchable tag on social media, “boho chic” is a fetishisation of a lifestyle rather than an authentic engagement with one. (We saw the same thing happen with the Y2K movement, when people chose to recreate the babe-tastic looks seen in music videos and on red carpets as opposed to the slightly less glamorous items normal people wore during the turn of the millennium.) People like Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and Rudolph Valentino would have baulked at the prospect of a Bohemian Style vertical on Shein, but I imagine they would have adored Ashley Olsen’s “artsy” robe.