Boom 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.
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.
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-snappingCher Horowitzpastels. 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.
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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 linksPaul Mescal in Normal PeopletoHarris 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 lovedRivalson 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 herPlayboy 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 ofThe 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