As a buyer of clothes and enjoyer of moderate debauchery, I’ve long been familiar with the term “bohemian” and its indication of loose-fitting floral prints and collections of expressive people sharing a single living space.
But as a relatively newish reader of history books, I kept getting mildly confused every time I read about Bohemia. Whenever mention of the region came and went in whatever book, the question would flare up all over again. That is, what do trust-funded neo-hippy lifestyles have to do with a particular region of Central Europe?
The answer is unsatisfying.
Bohemia is a province of the Holy Roman Empire, Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic. In ancient days as a subordinate of Moravia it shook off the weight of its chains with the Premyslid dynasty. Eventually the region would sleepwalk itself under the widening wings of the Luxembourg-led HRE and until it was consolidated with the rest of the holdings by the Habsburg duke, Ferdinand I. Culturally, Bohemia had the pretty standard Central European scenes of Protestant revolts and nationalism (Czech flavored). In the 20th century it became the industrial heartland of the sub-region. After the great, big wars of the same century, it fell back under subordination again (Commie flavored).
No sign of artsy freaks, proto-hippies, cocaine or promiscuity.
Boho, or bohemian, fashion was apparently born out of marketing and simple ignorance. Cuts and patterns were supposedly inspired by gypsies, who enough people at the time believed came from Czechoslovakia, rather than India-ish. Boho fashion has nothing to do with Bohemia.
Bohemianism, the unconventional lifestyle and/or subculture whose followers prioritize community living and artsy shit while rejecting such social constraints as money and polite manners, evidently built up steam in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 19th century.
And so it is nothing more than a fluke of false attribution that became a marketing term for the churning industry of over-priced clothes.
The Normal Times 