Boudoir Reclaimed
What was once a private room for aristocrat women in the 18th century has become one of the most sensual trends in contemporary fashion.
Via movie Tap Roots © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Originally, boudoir rooms were intimate spaces for beauty rituals and sensual moments, primarily used for bathing, getting ready, changing, and social gatherings among female friends. This comes to mind the classic Victorian era imagery: heavy red curtains, golden details, floral patterns, detailed mirrors, painted portraits on the walls, armchairs, a matching couch, and dressing tables filled with perfume, combs, talc, and rouge. Picture overly dressed women gossiping, laughing, and having big curls and bows in their heads. For how long yapping while getting ready with your friends has been one of the biggest pleasures in life?
It is 2025 and we’re still talking about it and being influenced by boudoir. The Victorian-era aesthetic has since evolved, influencing fashion, photography, and even social behavior. The term itself might not be mainstream, but its influence certainly is. Slip dresses, corsets, and kimonos are boudoir heritages. Think effortless sensuality: lace, silk, ribbons, sheer fabrics, and chiffon. In short, think lingerie-inspired fashion. How crazy it is to think that your favorite dress, a silk slip on with a flower pattern, has such a background story from so long ago?
JW Anderson Fall 2024 via Fashionista © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
This isn’t a fleeting flirtation. Boudoir has been weaving itself into the fabric of high fashion for years, seducing the runways season after season. Remember Gucci and Versace in Autumn/Winter 2022: dark shades, velvet textures, and unapologetic sensuality. Fast forward to Spring/Summer 2023 and JW Anderson, with playful subversion, or Alaïa with second-skin precision transparency.
Then came Valentino and Saint Laurent in Autumn/Winter 2024, offering two moods of seduction: Valentino’s romantic lace and longing, versus the bold Saint Laurent’s collection with tulle and all see-through. This year, the fantasy continues. Ferragamo’s whisper boudoir through leathers and smoky shades, while Schiaparelli takes it further into surrealism, bringing to the runway corsets, shades of red, and a loose vs. tight game when it comes to silhouettes. What is it about this trend that keeps designers under its spell? Is it the eternal contradiction of softness and strength? Or exposure and secrecy? Intimacy and spectacle?
Schiaparelli Spring/Summer 2025 via Fashion Bomb Daily © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
It is impossible to talk about boudoir without mentioning the provocative Jean Paul Gaultier, with boudoir elements at the core of the brand’s identity. The designer’s work consistently embraces defined female silhouettes in hourglass shapes, emphasizing the waist with corsetry and sensuality at its core. The playfulness with lingerie as outerwear and transparency mixed with disruptive elements such as tattoo patterns. Gaultier’s creations celebrate the female form with audacity, forever entangling boudoir elements with high fashion rebellion.
Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2025 via WWD © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Since 2023, Sabrina Carpenter’s stylist, Jared Ellner, has embraced boudoir as a central influence in the singer's wardrobe, both on stage and on the red carpet. Personality and fashion go hand in hand when it comes to Carpenter’s public identity: bold, flirtatious lyrics, her signature red-lip kiss, an air of sensuality, and a palette of pink and red. Even the set design for her Short n’ Sweet tour, with the giant bed, curtains, and pink pillows, evokes the intimate atmosphere of a boudoir room. Is there anything more boudoir than women having fun in one’s room? Have you ever tried this one?
Sabrina Carpenter at the Short n’ Sweet tour via @latestsabrina on Instagram. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Ellner’s influence doesn’t stop there. He has also crafted boudoir-inspired looks for Emma Chamberlain, infusing the influencer’s public appearances with similar references, including a campaign for her coffee brand. Because boudoir has never belonged solely to the clothes; it’s a full sensory experience, a world built as much through photography as fabric. Picture dim lighting that flatters every curve, suggestive shadows, a set designed to feel like a private sanctuary, all whispers of satin and soft blush tones. Boudoir invites you to look, and then dares you to imagine what’s just out of frame.
Via IG @chamberlaincoffee © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Of course, this is not the first time boudoir has caught the eye of popular culture. Leaving today’s scenario and entering the intoxicating Old Hollywood, this trend had a great presence in the glamorous aesthetic of the 1920s. Tight curls, perfect powdered faces, snatched waistlines, well-defined scarlet lips, satin, lace, and flowing robes. Boudoir lives in these in-between moments, where fantasy and reality blur and the gaze becomes part of the performance.
Iconic actresses like Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Greta Garbo all embodied this look, this sexy persona. Digital influencers might be a “new” concept in our society but influencers have always existed. What those women did, how they acted, how they did their beauty and especially what they wore influenced an entire generation. Don’t you wonder what’s left to invent in fashion since it’s always making full-circle movements and recycling itself again and again? Perhaps it’s about the thrill of slipping into something familiar, and wearing it differently, rebelliously, tenderly, as if for the very first time.
When embracing symbols of femininity, there’s always a fine line between hypersexualization and empowerment, but that line is ours to define. Boudoir can be one of the many ways to reclaim and celebrate womanhood, desire, and sensuality on our own terms of expressing it.
In the 18th century, corsets with rigid iron structures confined women’s bodies, and getting rid of them became a symbol of liberation. It's no coincidence that burning bras turned into a feminist protest in the 1970s. However, garments that once were seen as synonymous with control and submission have been reappropriated as tools of self-expression. No one will make you wear a corset today to be seen as the diamond of the season at a ball, but you can wear it as a choice.
Today, with the resurgence of body ideals like extreme thinness, it's crucial to stay aware of the messages behind the trends we embrace. Fashion, besides having opened a lot of doors for LGBTQIA+ people, often marginalizes diverse bodies and adopts self-acceptance only when it’s convenient. You can’t promote heroin chic culture and body positivity at the same time. But don’t panic, awareness doesn't have to mean rejection. Critical sense is a fundamental tool when it comes to interpreting fashion trends and social movements. It’s not about stripping away your pleasure, but to enjoy with intention.
Feminist protest against the Miss America pageant in 1968 via Getty Images © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
In a world where conservative forces are pushing back against progress, reclaiming elements of traditional femininity and making them your own can be a radical act of self-expression. Especially for those whose bodies and identities have historically been excluded from mainstream narratives of beauty—such as Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Asian women, trans and/or plus-size—embracing boudoir becomes more than a trend; it’s a reclamation of visibility and power.
That’s the beauty of fashion and politics: the freedom to choose what empowers you, and to leave behind what doesn’t. Whether it's in a corset or a loose T-shirt, the choice is yours to make—and that choice, in itself, is an act of resistance.
