Is this real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Encountered a landslide
There is no way to escape from reality
Open your eyes and look towards the sky
I'm just a poor boy and I don't need sympathy
Because I came calmly, calmly, a little bit excited, a little bit low
No matter how the wind blows, it can't really affect me.
Queen Bohemian Rhopsody
Beginning in 2002, a "bohemian" wind swept the world, especially the fashion world, and it seemed that overnight the stage was full of cascading pleated cuffs, loose tops with off-the-shoulders, inlaid lace, draped tassels, exaggerated ornaments, cross-body belts, delicate flowing hair, and almost all brands were more or less dyed with a bohemian atmosphere. Among them, Marnie's wide belt has a variety of bright decorations and low crotch skirts, especially "bohemian" charm. In the same year, Chloe's new designer Phoebe Philippe combined lace with a low neckline, balloon-sleeved shirt with exaggerated metal ornaments that reflect the bohemian style.
So what is "bohemian"?
"BOhemia" originally meant a specific geographical region of Central Europe that now belongs to the Czech Republic and has a population of around 6.25 million. "Bohemians" therefore refers to the peoples who inhabit bohemian lands. Bohemia was originally inhabited by a Celtic tribe that began in the first century BC and settled here by the Germanic people, and as they migrated southwestern, the Slavs occupied Bohemia around the sixth century, and they are the ancestors of today's Czechs. In the ninth century, the Slavs living in Bohemia embraced Christianity and became part of Charlemagne's Empire. From the tenth century onwards, it became an autonomous territory of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1526, Bohemia became the domain of the Austrian Habsburgs, but legally bohemia (including Moravia and Silesia) retained relative independence. In 1810, the Habsburgs dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia became the domain of the Austrian Empire. In 1867, the Habsburgs established the "Austria-Hungary" dual empire, and Bohemia became an autonomous province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the end of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and Bohemia became part of the newly established Czechoslovak Republic. In 1993, Czechoslovakia disintegrated and Bohemia is now part of the Czech Republic.
The second meaning of "bohemian" emerged in nineteenth-century France and referred to "a group of artists and writers who lived an unconventional way of life". In traditional French, the bohemians refer to the gypsies who believed that bohemians within the Habsburgs were the home of these wandering peoples. The Gypsies were a wandering people who called themselves Roma and originally lived in northern India around 1000 AD, when the Gypsies left India and migrated outward. In the fourteenth century they came to the Balkan Peninsula and in the sixteenth century to Scotland and Sweden. The reason for the word "Gypsy" was that the dark skin of the Gypsies made Europeans think they were a people from Egypt, the only hot country known to Europeans at the time. The Gypsies were a wandering people, and Baudelaire described them this way in The Flower of Evil:
This gaze is like fire and blazing with god's habitual tribes
Yesterday on the road, they carried the babies on their backs,
Or, in order to let the child take a big bite,
Simply open the sagging breasts, a treasure trove of unremitting preparations.
In people's minds, gypsies are seen as "wanderers", people who are not bound by tradition. The same is true of bohemian artists, who are the "wanderers" of the modern metropolis, untethered by tradition, against the mainstream bourgeois culture Paris is the main stage for the bohemians, who challenge the status quo by rejecting mainstream values and mocking the bourgeois way of life. It was also the precursor to bohemianism that we now fascinate.
The bohemian way of life was popularized by Murgé's novel Scenes of Bohemian Life, and later became known for Puccini's opera Bohemians. Octave Tassaert's Studio (1845) is a good reflection of bohemian life: a young artist working intently in a messy, empty apartment; despite his poor life, he loves art. This is the essence of the bohemian spirit.
In the twentieth century, bohemians appeared in Greenwich Village and East Village in New York, appeared in San Francisco, and produced the famous "Beat Generation" and later the "Hippie" movement, which became the main force of the American counterculture movement in the sixties.
The very basis of the "bohemian" spirit is its rebellious spirit: a revolt against the extravagant values of mainstream society, against the increasingly commercialized and vulgarized so-called taste values. The "bohemians" used to oppose brands in their own way, but now they can only stand up to brands and tastes. Since the beginning of the 21st century, "bohemian" has been materialized and commercialized in the tide of commerce, and bohemian "has become a trademark, rather than a unique spirit and a unique way of life." Bohemian "now has a way of life reduced to sitting at a Starbucks drinking coffee while listening to alternative music."
But even so, we still have a unique affinity for the bohemian spirit. We have the impression that a girl in a bohemian dress is definitely a girl with her own unique ideas. We also still firmly believe in Ye Ying's words, "Spiritual bohemians are always only a very small minority of an era."