Rich, tacky and proud: The ‘boom boom’ trend that always emerges during crises

Rich, tacky and proud: The ‘boom boom’ trend that always emerges during crises In opposition to quiet luxury, a different kind of wealthy person is inspiring style on runways, on the street and on album covers The relationship between fashion and money has given rise to all kinds of aphorisms and trends. On one hand, there is the famous quote from Dolly Parton, who, in response to those who accused the country music superstar of dressing like a slut, wrote: “It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap, honey.” On the other, the much-vaunted silent luxury , the super-rich’s response to logo mania.

Boosted by the success of Succession , the trend dictated that the truly wealthy must wear sweaters that look simple — until you touch one and realize that it’s Loro Piana cashmere and costs thousands of euros. And then we have another extreme entirely: money that wants to look like money. It was all the rage in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Dynasty reigned on TV — but its aesthetic never really went away (indeed, it’s been given other names, like bling bling).



And the look is currently making an official comeback under another catchy and musical moniker: “boom boom,” as coined by fashion expert Sean Monahan in his newsletter 8Ball . It is, in his words, another “fetishization of the past.” Where is the movement currently visible? In Kim Kardashian attired in a suit-dress, looking all the world like an aggressive executive on the cover of GQ .

Or in singer Chappell Roan, clad in a suit and tie for her new single The Giver like a kind of Gordon Gekko (the character of Michael Douglas on Wall Street ) in an incarnation as a power lesbian. Of course, it can also be seen in the Trumps, not to mention their sycophants and imitators, at White House dinners, at Mar-a-Lago, and at Manhattan’s most expensive restaurants. And from there, it has spilled out onto the streets.

In the pages of New York Magazine , Emilia Petrarca describes the trend as “looking like you’ve spent money for the sake of looking like you’ve spent money.” Glitter, brands, symbols of power. And a tie? But of course.

It’s “a shorthand for the aesthetics of Patrick Bateman [protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis’ classic, American Psycho, played by Christian Bale in the 2000 film adaptation]: high-end, hyper-curated suits; a revolving door of expensive new restaurants praised not for their food but for their exclusivity; and an obsessive fetishization of wealth,” according to Mashable journalist Christianna Silva. Bateman is key to understanding boom boom. In fact, the character took TikTok by storm a few years ago.

It’s no coincidence that his aesthetic, that of a 26-year-old yuppie who wears Valentino and Cerruti suits and walks around with a cordless phone (back then, a technology reserved for the rich), is destined to dominate 2025. Luca Guadagnino is another one of the aesthetic’s modern-day masterminds, and is preparing a new film adaptation of the novel American Psycho just as the tale’s looks are triumphing on catwalks. Anthony Vaccarello, creative director at Saint Laurent, said that the book was the inspiration for the French fashion house’s Fall/Winter 2024 men’s collection.

For its part, Armani has launched a campaign called That’s So Armani , with which the brand aims to make it clear that the oversized suits with generous shoulders now all the rage hail from the brand’s archive. In fact, the Giorgio Armani Fall-Winter 2025/2026 fashion show was a tribute to the company’s past looks. Rafa Rodríguez, journalist and fashion critic, thinks that silent luxury was “nonsense, an ideologically twisted interpretation of certain aesthetic codes, in line with the advance of conservative thinking.

I don’t think boom boom is a reaction against that, but rather, an adaptation of aesthetics to the current message in times of cryptobros.” Nor does he see any irony in this blast from the past. “Irony is something that is very much out of fashion among the younger generations.

” The term boom boom is inspired by the nightclub Boom Boom Room, located on the 18th floor of Manhattan’s Standard Hotel, and also on the restaurant Windows on the World, which was perched atop one of the uppermost floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower and was one of New York’s great spots for a power meal in the ’80s and ’90s. “If money and power and ego and a passion for perfection could create this extraordinary pleasure..

.this instant landmark, Windows on the World..

.money and power and ego could rescue the city from its ashes. What a high,” the food critic Gael Greene wrote in 1976 for New York Magazine .

Monahan explains in the same publication that Trump’s second presidency will generate economic optimism (although anyone still holding on to this belief will require a healthy supply of patience), but at the same time, anxiety. Monahan reflected on such consequence in an 8Ball graphic, noting how changes in technology and society create problems and opportunities. The new hierarchy that this process created, Monahan continues, renewed our desire to show off status.

Meaning, the more uncertainty, the more display of gold? Monahan finds that baby boomers believe status is derived from merit, that trends start based on things from our everyday lives, what we buy, what we like, what we do. “New money attempts to achieve the status of old money — a pursuit that is always accompanied by accusations of vulgarity. Pebro Mansilla, a sociologist and fashion critic, has an interesting theory about the boom boom aesthetic and its supposed vulgarity, as seen through the eyes of silent luxury.

“Silent luxury belongs to those who have enjoyed power for a long time. This new loud luxury lashes out against it out of spite.” According to Mansilla, the vast majority of the nouveaux riches readjust their tastes as they climb the social ladder.

He points out that in the past, this process required an increase in income. Today, it is often no more than a strenuous exercise in aspiration: that is, looking rich without being rich. “There is also resistance to social domestication, a proud display of differences, whether they be based on income, race or sexual preferences.

Much of the discourse around ‘ugliness,’ in which one dresses as an outsider, claims it is a weapon of social confrontation. Perhaps the time has come when the nouveaux riches no longer want to hide and prefer to take risks and face the consequences.” As much as Monahan believes that those who embrace the boom boom aesthetic have no particular political affiliation, Petrarca writes in New York Magazine that the idea that someone can adopt a style without it reflecting who they are is a sham.

“In reality, the idea that you can adopt a style and not have it reflect on who you are is a farce. Whether we like it or not, when we dress, when we decorate, we join teams; we tell the world about ourselves. When taken at face value, boom boom reads as a thumbs-up to greed,” she writes.

So who benefits from an aesthetic that celebrates, with or without irony, the pursuit of wealth above all? Rodríguez opines, with a dash of sarcasm that the answer is, “Above all, Luca Guadagnino, if he doesn’t take too long to release his American Psycho .” Mansilla’s response is more blunt. “The market benefits.

Always. Brands, no matter how prestigious, are incapable of renouncing success, either financial or reputational. Luxury and fashion have done it before: zero tolerance for newcomers went out the window in the face of new Arab, Russian, Korean and Chinese clients.

If your culture encourages the shameless display of money, we’re not going to put obstacles in our own way,” he says. Can we talk about cultural appropriation when what is being copied is the style of millionaires? An interesting question, but perhaps one to be answered in a different article. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition Tu suscripción se está usando en otro dispositivo ¿Quieres añadir otro usuario a tu suscripción? Si continúas leyendo en este dispositivo, no se podrá leer en el otro.

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