Maybe it started with Jane Birkin on the beach at Cannes in 1969, wearing a white crocheted crop top and white jeans. Or maybe it was at Woodstock the same year, with those hippies in their colorful vests and tangles of beads. To be sure, Kate Hudson as Penny Lane, in that shearling-collar coat and those peasant blouses in 2000’s which was set in the ’70s rock world, brought it all back into focus.
Boho fashion, in the contemporary sense, has murky origins. It only vaguely references the nomadic lifestyle of the Romani people for whom the French word was coined. (And that itself was a misattribution because the Romani people did not originate from the Bohemia region in the Czech Republic.
) It has taken on a you-know-it-when-you-see-it quality and usually includes some of the following elements: flowy, frilly layers; fringe; floral and paisley prints; abundant layered jewelry; and over-the-knee boots. From Penny Lane in theaters, boho made its way to the small screen–with Blake Lively’s Serena van der Woodsen on and Mischa Barton’s Marissa Cooper on —and the street, where celebrity style was starting to become a phenomenon documented in real time by a new media format called blogs. This early-to-mid-aughts era—arguably the most important in terms of boho’s mass appeal–was also ruled by Nicole Richie in her oversize sunglasses and scarf headbands, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in turquoise and broderie anglaise, and the unforgettable Kate Moss at Glastonbury and,.
