Goodbye woke, fashion is entering its ‘boom boom' era

Telegraph

17-03-2025

Saturday afternoon in Chelsea, and two young women in their early 20s are having brunch. I can't stop staring at them – and not on account of their freshly enhanced lips. It's their clothes that have transfixed me.
This is partly because, as a north Londoner, I'm not used to seeing young women brunching without their Adanola sweatshirts and Lululemon leggings. Mainly, however, it's because they're wearing fur – real fur – without fear or apology. However 'real' the fakes might look these days, the lustre of mink is unmistakable.
In fact, it's as unmistakable as is the mood change currently sweeping through fashion. Something new is afoot, and fur is only a part of it.
Other components include ultra-high heels, power shoulders, corsets and camisoles for daywear; louche fabrics (velvet, brocade, lace); a surfeit of leather; the fetishisation of tailoring and office wear; exaggerated proportions (pannier hips, balloon sleeves, ruffled skirts).
Not to mention ostentatious and/or impractical handbags (the Chloé Paddington revival, the mobile phone-shaped Judith Leiber handbag that sold earlier this year on resale site The RealReal for $6,000).
This is not just about splashing the cash on big-ticket items, though that is often a part of it. It's about prioritising opulence over proving that you're socially and environmentally conscious. Out go the sustainably sourced, wash-at-30-degrees cotton shirts: in come the high-maintenance, dry-clean only fabrics.
It's wearing Versace with the unapologetic sexiness of Sabrina Carpenter, or breathing new life into vintage Lacroix, like Jennifer Lawrence. Speaking of which, it's no accident that the most exuberantly colourful designer of the 1980s is enjoying a revival: Christian Lacroix's aesthetic fits perfectly with the times.
OK, archival fashion isn't always as sustainable as it seems as many dresses are remakes of the originals. But that's not the point. The point is to look fabulous.
Although really, it's as much about a new mood as a new look. After seasons spent caring about the provenance of everything – where it was made, who it was made by, what it consists of – fashion is moving into a different gear.
Rather than driving diligently in the slow lane, it's taken off the handbrake and is speeding into a future focused less on frugality and more on fun. Put simply: fashion is showing signs of having given up on woke.
When Melania Trump wore her 'I really don't care, do u?' Zara parka to visit a child migrant detention centre in 2018, it felt jarring and out of touch. Seven years later, it feels close to capturing the current mood.
'I do think people are tired of woke,' agrees brand consultant and journalist Melanie Rickey, whose podcast, The Enoughness, encourages people to shop mindfully for no more than they need.
'We've had a decade of it already; people are over it. That's why Trump got in. Everyone got too carried away with wokery. They alienated the other side, who are seeking revenge – so it has a lot to answer for.'
Whether fashion's carelessly opulent mood is a form of revenge dressing is a matter of opinion. But a report by trends intelligence and consumer platform LS:N Global seems to support the idea that people are suffering from woke fatigue, and would rather spend money on what feels right for them, rather than for the planet.
'In 2025, consumers are more into experiential escapism than ever before,' notes foresight analyst Seyi Oduwole. 'Fashion is increasingly creating exclusive and bespoke experiences for those consumers looking to escape the volatility and uncertainty they face.'
It's this uncertainty that is driving the change. At times like these, you can hardly blame people for embracing an escapist mindset, and clothes are a part of that. Rather than virtue signalling, we want them to signal that we're up for a good time. In New York, they're calling the mood 'boom boom', a term coined by the trend forecaster Sean Monahan, who also came up with the trends 'normcore' (2013) and 'vibe shift' (2022).
Presumably, Monahan was inspired by a recent Marc Jacobs party held in the mirrored enclaves of The Boom Boom Room, a club on the top floor of New York's The Standard Hotel. 'There's something sleazy about the simplicity of saying something is very boom boom,' he told The Cut magazine.
Sleaze is an undeniable element of the new mood. 'Boom boom' might be glamorous and overdressed, but it's also subversive. Alessandro Michele nails the aesthetic at Valentino, where he's bringing the same exuberant maximalism that he formerly brought to Gucci.
He staged the most recent Valentino show in a set designed to look like a public toilet, a counterpoint to the glamour of the clothes that brought them down a notch, anchoring them in the real world, despite their pomp.
Fittingly, his guest of honour was Chappell Roan, the queer 27-year-old pop sensation beloved by Gen Z for her outrageous looks and her outspoken views. Roan looks very 'boom boom'; the rose-embroidered crinoline she wore to the Valentino show is basically a blueprint for the new era. But she is also an activist, and one whom Donald Trump would likely cite as the definition of woke.
Fashion and wokery have never made happy bedfellows. For all its attempts at sustainability, fashion exists to sell new products, whose creation, however mindful, can only ever deplete the very resources it claims to want to preserve. Much of its activism has been dismissed as posturing.
Think of Karl Lagerfeld's 2014 Chanel show in which the models cosplayed protest with 'Make Fashion Not War' banners, or Maria Grazia Chiuri's 2016 Dior collection with its £250 'We Should All Be Feminists' T-shirts.
Compare that with the $55 'You're A Slave To Money Then You Die' tee now being sold by online retailer SSense, and you have an idea of the current mood change.
No-one is doubting Maria Grazia Chiuri's feminist credentials, but it would be in poor taste for Dior to sell a feminist T-shirt after the owners of its parent company, LVMH – the billionaire Arnault family – were pictured pride of place next to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos at president Trump's inauguration.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration listed 'feminism' as one of the words it wanted to purge in its war on woke initiatives.
Customers, particularly younger ones, are highly sensitive to hypocrisy, and hold brands to far higher account than they will ever hold themselves. Gen Z might have a reputation for being sustainably-minded consumers, but those who live among them might have a different take.
'Of course I buy fast fashion,' says Lily, an 18 year-old student from Leeds. 'People shouldn't be shamed for shopping at Primark when it's all they can afford. It's not Gen Z's fault that everything costs so much. We didn't make this mess. Sorry, but you've got to have money to have ethics.'
She has a point. When the people who have money don't always appear to have ethics either, you can begin to see why tooling around in sustainable hemp might lose its lustre, or why shopping for a T-shirt with the fewest air miles to its name might seem like a pointless task. It's harder to act for the betterment of the planet when those in power are brazenly looking after Number One.
For all the negative connotations that have unfairly become attached to it, all being 'woke' means is being alert to injustice.
'Wokery has worked in fashion up to a point,' notes Rickey. 'The decade of intense fashion activism that followed the Rana Plaza disaster in 2014, for example, has been instrumental to the sustainability conversation, and activists like Orsola De Castro, Aja Barber and Livia Firth were a key part in that change.
'Their work educated a large swathe (though not all) of Gen Z to make better choices, to the extent that their work is baked into many of that generation's thinking about fashion and style. The rise of secondhand shopping on Vinted & eBay is testament to that.'
Rather than focusing on sustainability, Rickey believes the focus should be on responsibility. 'My take is that heavy-handed wokery is not needed for the time being. It's done its job for now. People are more sophisticated – they interrogate their choices more. Choosing carefully and well is the way forward.
'If we can use our own knowledge to make our own educated decisions about what we need – and use our own personal agency – that is the win.'