'I Love Boosters' Is a Radical Celebration of What Fashion Is, and What It Can Become

This story contains major spoilers about I Love Boosters. When you think of your favorite fashion movies, who’s the hero? More often than not, it’s a member of the industry’s top echelon—the designers, the supermodels, the elite who can afford the clothes as daily wear. Boots Riley’s latest film, I Love Boosters, is truly fashion-forward, chock-full of style inspiration and reverence for personal style. But it flips the fashion world’s hierarchy on its head—making Miranda Priestly’s worst nightmare into the best fashion movie in years.

Corvette (Keke Palmer), the heroine of this genre-bending comedy, is a booster—a fly vigilante who robs ‘fits from the rich, er, their boutiques, and sells them at a much lower price. Her Oakland-based crew, known as the Velvet Gang, includes Sade (Naomi Ackie), a single mom looking for a come-up, and Mariah (Taylour Paige), who’s trying to make fetch happen with her slogan “Fashion. Forward. Filanthropy.” Their favorite mark is Metro Designer, the chain founded by visionary Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a former child genius turned creative director who’s like a haughty mix of Phoebe Philo, Andy Warhol, and Steve Jobs. Corvette, an aspiring designer, reveres Christie—at least until the icon steals one of her designs, turning the Velvet Gang’s underground enterprise into a revenge mission.

This fuels the film’s examination of who the Christie Smiths of the world exploit to stay on top. The Velvet Gang’s boosting may affect Metro’s bottom line, but “those urban bitches,” as Christie calls them, represent both her loyal customer base and a well of inspiration. In a telling moment, for example, a Metro customer picks the look Christie copied from Corvette off a rack while claiming “Christie Smith knows what the streets want.”

Eventually, the trio finds allies in others oppressed by the supply chain: Violeta (Eiza González), a Metro retail employee demanding fairer pay and working conditions, and Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a Chinese factory worker who spends her days sand-blasting denim alongside her family, much to the detriment of their health, due to the hazardous materials involved. Outside of documentaries like The True Cost and The Machinists, real-life workers like Jianhu are rarely seen as Hollywood heroes.

But I Love Boosters isn’t necessarily a screed against the fashion industry. Rather, Riley, who’s known for making surrealist films that point to the absurdities of capitalism, wants you to think twice about what goes into the garment you’re wearing. And underneath its commentary on the industry’s inequality, the core of I Love Boosters is a celebration of what fashion truly is, and what it can become.

Throughout the film, Christie conflates her products with wearable art, defining her clothing as her way of touching the world, or “changing humanity’s perception through color and fabric.” The people who wear her clothes are “reflecting the light they want to reflect.” Her speeches are presented as the type of self-mythologizing speech we’re used to seeing from tycoons, the real-life people who would claim that the working conditions of people like Violeta and Jianhu aren’t as important as their greater vision. But if you consider the words separate from her exploitative actions, don’t they speak to the basis of what fashion’s all about? Self-representation. Dressing for the you you want to be. The you you are, undiluted by your ordained role in the machine.

A movie like I Love Boosters doesn’t succeed unless it takes fashion seriously, both its essence and its flaws. In addition to their Robin Hood philanthropy, each Velvet Gang heist is also a celebration of inventive styling. Corvette doesn’t have the resources to fuel her couture dreams; she’s squatting in a closed fried-chicken joint, with her debt symbolized by a giant boulder pursuing her through the streets of Oakland. Thanks to the work of costume designer Shirley Kurata, it’s clear that Corvette built both her own wardrobe and the intricate disguises that the Velvet Gang wears on their runs by thrifting, scrounging, and upcycling whatever she can get her hands on. Kurata crafts maximalist, fantastical looks with innovative silhouettes and unexpected textiles; in a mid-film montage meant to get Christie’s attention, the looks range from Harajuku-inspired Acid Trip to Midsommar Flower Gown but Cunt.

Before the class war begins, Corvette sneaks into Christie's slanted apartment to get a look at Metro’s next collection ahead of its debut. As Corvette hides her affiliation with the Velvet Gang, her obvious adoration briefly wins Christie over, and the icon even admires her fan’s outfit. As Corvette explains the dress, she recalls its inspiration: her childhood memories of her parents’ car, its turquoise-blue interior. As an adult, Corvette feels safe when she’s enveloped in turquoise; Christie’s insistence that the dress is actually aquamarine is casually cruel, which foreshadows later intentional cruelty when Christie steals the anecdote for her own backstory, as a fuck you to the booster. The turquoise beef gets to the emotional heart of the characters’ feud; Corvette’s fashion is an expression of identity, and Christie wants to cannibalize her style and throw the actual, inconvenient person in the trash. It’s a visceral, personal depiction of a tale as old as time.

I Love Boosters ends at the start of a radical-progressive utopia, as the Velvet Gang and their allies inspire a grassroots labor movement that stretches across the world. Christie faces a unionization effort that will affect her pocket, in a clear argument that community and collective action are effective ways to bring change. The ending leaves the audience to imagine a better world. We may not know the specifics of how the labor movement will bring change, or whether the fashion industry can truly be equitable—but everyone Christie exploited has made a better life for themselves. The Velvet Gang, for instance, runs a community center funded by their boosting profits.

Fashion girlies aren’t immune to the general bleakness of living in America in 2026. After years of following “cores” and microtrends fueled by fast fashion’s constant output, young people are getting more vocal about seeking slower, greener alternatives to overconsumption. I Love Boosters invites viewers to look beyond surviving within the systems we have now and imagine a better one. What could the fashion industry, or the world, look like if the Corvettes and Violetas and Jianhus could rival the Christies? Maybe I Love Boosters’ stylish tale of collectivist power is the fashion movie we need.