Latest news with #boomboom
Globe and Mail
30-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
‘Boom boom' fashion is having a moment as Canadians dress against economic uncertainty
A wave of loud, 1980s-inspired, visibly affluent dressing – power suits with exaggerated shoulders, high-slit skirts and vibrant hues – has been taking over catwalks, red carpets, and the streets of London, Paris and New York. Now, the fashion trend is creeping into some of Canada's fashion hotspots. To describe this shift in aesthetic, L.A.-based trend forecaster Sean Monahan coined the term 'boom boom' in December. (Mr. Monahan, 38, introduced the concepts of 'normcore' in 2014 and 'vibe shift' in 2022 to describe the fashions of the time.) Mr. Monahan said he began noticing people swapping sneakers for loafers when going out, followed by an influx of menswear, fur, pleated pants and classic silhouettes. Compared to an expensive, but plain, designer sweatshirt, 'boom boom' pieces seek to exert status and a feeling of excess. They inherently signal wealth because of their traditional craftsmanship, but can be cheaply manufactured today, said Mr. Monahan, who writes about cultural trends in his 8Ball newsletter. The 'boom boom' aesthetic is being embraced by fashion-conscious Canadians who are latching onto signals of financial success they may or may not be able to afford. 'We live in a fake-it-till-you-make-it era, and when the economy gets worse, people start faking it more,' Mr. Monahan said. The nostalgia – and big business – behind fashion's archival revival While not everyone is taking 'boom boom' to the extreme, the gravitation toward wearing visible luxury contrasts with the financial uncertainty Canadians are facing, brought on by the Canada-U.S. trade war and years of higher living costs. A March, 2025 Leger survey commissioned by CPA Canada and BDO Debt Solutions found that 83 per cent of Canadians said they were adjusting their financial plans due to the current economic state. Meanwhile, new Canadian graduates face a gruelling economic reality. In the first quarter of 2025, the unemployment rate for those under 25 who have completed post-secondary education was 11.2 per cent. For this group, that's the highest rate to start the year in at least two decades, excluding the pandemic. Natalie Michie, 25, style editor of the Canadian outlet Fashion Magazine, emphasized the trend's role in the resurgence of 80s-esque power dressing. '['Boom Boom'] goes back to reclaiming a bit of power in a time that we feel so powerless,' she said. In November, Ms. Michie, who says her personal style leans feminine, challenged herself to wear neckties for a week. In the process, she says she unlocked a newfound can-do attitude. 'Having the necktie – it's been my own way to lean into the 'boom boom' mindset, and I'm certainly not someone who is in the tax bracket that can be living the 'boom boom' lifestyle,' she said. Pressure to not only dress, but also act, rich is hitting the mass es through 'lifestyle dysmorphia,' which occurs when someone has a distorted perception of what they should be able to achieve financially at their stage of life, said Mr. Monahan. 'Social media has skewed our visions of what's normal,' said Shannon Lee Simmons, a certified financial planner. 'It's very hard for us to know where we stack up, and then our brain just fills in the rest.' The 'boom boom' trend is a reversal of 2023's 'quiet luxury,' which popularized elevated basics such as cashmere baseball caps and toned-down, neutral pieces over giant designer logos. It's 'an aesthetic that embraces a sleazy and conspicuous wealthy effect, but counterintuitively, is coming from a place of insecurity,' said Mr. Monahan. Hence, some young, fashion-conscious Canadians are finding ways to achieve 'boom boom' while staying on budget. Canadian fashion designers get creative amid Trump tariff threat Nicholas Barsoum, 28, the manager of I Miss You MAN, a vintage designer retailer in Toronto, said he's seen an influx of young men looking for expensive-looking suits. 'A lot of vintage, especially Giorgio Armani, old-money stuff is going to much younger people,' Mr. Barsoum said. And vintage designer pieces, which can go for a fraction of retail prices, are within reach. 'A guy wearing a black suit and tie in the summer is more interesting than yet another street fit,' Mr. Barsoum said. While strolling along the Ossington Strip in Toronto, Marie Minimo, who works as a theatre producer and marketer, acknowledged that their matching pleated top and pants are a dupe for the designer brand Issey Miyake, which they purchased from the Chinese online retailer AliExpress. 'I'm constantly worried about having enough money to pay for groceries and rent,' said the 25-year-old, who stopped buying designer clothes after recently getting a place of their own. 'I just can't afford it any more,' they said.
The Guardian
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jess-Cartner Morley: Boom boom – the new vibe rewriting the rules of fashion
B oom boom is this year's new vibe. It's a vibe, not just a trend, meaning it takes tectonic rumblings in culture and gives them expression in what we wear and say and drink and watch on TV. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Boom boom is a new weather system that is sweeping away pretty much everything we thought we knew about modern fashion (gender fluidity, quiet luxury, elevated basics, ethical brands) and replacing it with ambitious power dressing for day, and traditional tropes of feminine and masculine sexual allure for evening. It is fur (real or fake), gold watches, big hair, wearing ties, sexy dancing. It is a silhouette that has inflection points at the shoulders (big), the breasts (important) and the waist (tiny) instead of worshipping a peachy bum or flat abs. Boom boom is a real marmalade-dropper, a clunky thwack of a key change. Which in itself is very 2025. Climate chaos has come for the cultural environment at the same time as the meteorological one. Living in the world right now feels a lot like living through one extreme weather event after another. Boom boom is clothes designed to turn heads, rather than the if-you-know-you-know wink to camera of quiet luxury But let's cut to the chase: if this is the age of boom boom, what's the dress code? There is a lot of heavy stuff to unpack here, but we also need to figure out what boom boom means for our actual wardrobes, right? Perhaps this sounds like a shallow, atavistic way to approach a cultural vibe shift. To which I would say: actually, I think you'll find it's a very boom boom way to approach a cultural vibe shift, so get with the programme, grandma. (Being confrontational to the point of a bit rude is very boom boom.) Boom boom is bright colours: jewel-box shades of emerald, ruby and sapphire, or confident, gum-snapping Cher Horowitz pastels. It is satin shirts not linen ones. It is clothes designed to turn heads, rather than the if-you-know-you-know wink to camera of quiet luxury. It is designer kaftans, not Dryrobes. It is movie-star-in-a-convertible sunglasses and baseball caps with provocative slogans, not floppy sun hats. It is lace bras rather than T-shirt ones, short skirts instead of midi dresses. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion The more you look for boom boom, the more you see how much of it is around us already. Boom boom is there in the bold blue-and-white banker-striped cotton shirts that the hip young things in your office are wearing with their horseshoe jeans. Boom boom is there in how jewellery for men has become mainstream – not just the clumsy flex of a chunky gold watch, but the return of the signet ring and the glint of a silver necklace, a chain that links Paul Mescal in Normal People to Harris Dickinson in Babygirl. It was there in last year's 'mob wife' trend and is there in pleated trousers with belts killing off tracksuit bottoms. It is there in how wearing a full face of makeup, which skipped generation X entirely, has returned with a vengeance for younger women. It is there in how much we all loved Rivals on TV even though most people didn't expect to like it at all. It is there in the mirrored-ceiling visual erotica of Sabrina Carpenter, and in Chappell Roan singing about her Playboy Brigitte Bardot. It is there in our fascination with television that lets us overidentify and overthink the psychological quirks of the 1%, which started with Succession back in 2018 and was alive and kicking in this year's third season of The White Lotus. Hmm. Makes you think, doesn't it? Perhaps boom boom isn't something that's just been landed on us by people who voted for Trump. Perhaps boom boom speaks to more of us than we might think. But I'm letting myself get dragged back into the cultural weeds here, and away from what the new vibe means for what you wear on Monday to work and on Friday night to the pub. And that's what matters. Sean Monahan, the trend forecaster who coined the phrase boom boom, says he likes that 'it's fun to say'. Whisper it: it's also fun to wear. Model: Teesta at Milk. Styling assistant: Sam Deaman. Hair and make up: Delilah Blakeney using Mac. Dress, £285, Marciano by Guess . Necklace, £179, Anisa Sojka
