How to Master Bohemian Chic Without Looking Overdone, According to a French Editor
It's all about compromise.
Eugénie Trochu is a Who What Wear editor in residence known for her transformative work at Vogue France and her Substack newsletter, where she documents and shares new trends, her no-nonsense approach to fashion and style, plus other musings. She's also working on her upcoming first book that explores fashion as a space of memory, projection, and reinvention.
Adopting bohemian chic today means managing to look like a free woman who could fly to Marrakech on a whim while still wearing her favorite jeans very seriously and answering her emails.
In the South of France, spring always gives me slightly dangerous style ideas. They're dangerous in the sense that I could very easily wake up one morning with the urge to become another woman, a woman who walks barefoot across a terra-cotta terrace, who wears bracelets up to her elbows, and who knows exactly where to buy saffron in bulk.
This year, the obsession is clear: bohemian. But it's not the "festival sponsored by a ginger-beer brand" version nor the mystical young girl picking daisies for her Instagram Stories. It's a silhouette somewhere between Talitha Getty—the aristocrat who clearly made some very bad decisions but with panache—and Frankie in Grace and Frankie, a woman who has understood everything and simply doesn't care anymore.
In short, it's an adult kind of bohemian. It's an important nuance. Between the Woodstock hippie smoking joints in conceptual mud and the girl in a white dress who looks like a wedding centerpiece, there is a whole gray zone. It's a zone where you can crave fabrics that move, slightly naïve embroideries, and jewelry that chimes while still keeping straight-leg jeans and a mildly skeptical gaze. I also think this desire comes from the moment we're living in. We spend our days being efficient, connected, organized, geolocated, so putting on a blouse that is a little too loose almost becomes a philosophical gesture. It's a way of saying, "I will continue to answer my emails but in something that breathes."
The return of this aesthetic is no coincidence. At Chloé, Chemena Kamali very intelligently reactivates the spirit of Gaby Aghion, the idea that clothes should accompany real life, not stiffen it. The result is silhouettes that are fluid, sensual, slightly unruly. You feel these girls could miss a train, fall in love, or change cities without needing to change outfits.
Personally, I refuse the total look. Total bohemian always makes me feel as though I've been cast in a silent remake of Lawrence of Arabia, so I mix. That's where it becomes interesting. An ethnic blouse with almost-boring jeans. Orange striped boho trousers with another almost-boring white T-shirt. A tasseled dress with a vintage denim jacket. Jewelry that tells the story of an entire life with very Parisian loafers.
This kind of compromise reassures me. I can be slightly whimsical while still remaining someone who knows exactly where the car keys are. Dressing, in the end, is always a negotiation with yourself between the free woman you imagine yourself becoming in March and the one who has to drop off a child somewhere at 8:52, between the desire to leave for Rajasthan and the reality of a Zoom meeting.
Shop My Top Bohemian-Chic Picks for 2026
