In college, I worked at a Hollister. Yes, that Hollister; the heavily airbrushed fantasy brand of Southern California adolescence that combined peak aspirational mall culture with a playlist of ‘00s surf-rock remixes, suffocating scents, and proximity to a very specific kind of teenage cool. Picture posters of laidback beach bonfires, the myth of effortless West Coast (and Western) beauty standards, and sun-drenched exclusivity. My manager used to openly chastise me and my fellow desperate-for-approval-and-extra-shifts colleagues for not wearing the latest denim mini, layered tanks, or “SoCal, so low” jeans. One day, she berated me in front of the rest of the staff for wearing “last season’s lace cami like a loser.” So, during my next shift when she wasn’t looking, I boosted one. It was my revenge for the psychological warfare of existing as a Black girl within a retail era obsessed with centering whiteness, upholding social hierarchies among the few employees of color, and the pressure to pour what little money we earned back into the problematic company. Boosting was a retail worker’s quiet rebellion — and all of these memories hit me like the cologne we had to spritz around the store every 15 minutes like clockwork when I was watching Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, a movie about what happens when oppressed retail employees turn to shoplifting for survival.
I Love Boosters is many things: absurdist comedy, magical realist drama, action heist adventure, and searing anti-capitalist satire. It’s funny, bright, weird and so fun. But at its core, it’s a Robin-Hood tale of a group of young women (the Velvet Gang) who boost from a chain of high-end retailers in Oakland called Metro Designers and sell the goods for less back to their community. When I got to sit down with the gang, played by Keke Palmer (Corvette), Naomi Ackie (Sade), Taylour Paige (Mariah), and later additions Poppy Liu (Jianhu), and Eiza González (Violeta), I told them how triggering the movie was as a former retail worker and when I asked what advice they had for current employees dealing with a bad boss (Will Poulter plays a tyrannical store manager with hilarious precision) and low pay, they were quick to give advice to the girls presently going through it.
The thing about fashion is that it’s a microcosm of something bigger… [From] how many people it exploits … to how much it costs.. to who’s making it and what the conditions are like for them.
naomi ackie
“Get some arch support, you’re on your feet a little too long,” Paige offered, for practicality. “Hydrate,” Ackie chimed in. “For the girlies who aren’t seen on the floor, we see you too,” Liu said, referring to her days working in the back room at Rag & Bone folding jeans while González nodded along in solidarity. And Palmer gave the last word of advice: “Get your next job lined up.”
The five actresses’ distinct personalities were on display during our sitdown in Los Angeles, and on screen, they are uniquely electric. Palmer’s Corvette is the ringleader of the gang, grounded its antics with a genuine obsession with Metro Designers’ CEO, Christie Smith, a deliciously villainous Demi Moore. Corvette is a designer herself and her love of fashion is what drives her boosting business. That, and necessity. Sade and Mariah are her ride or dies, tagging along for the mess and the felonies with unwavering loyalty. Jianhu and Violeta join the gang with their own motivations. Jianhu is a Chinese factory worker whose entire family has been exploited by the conditions in Metro Designers’ facilities. And Violeta works in the store long before Sade, Mariah, and Corvette show up, toiling away for pennies as the company skims off her paycheck. Fed up, Violeta leads her colleagues in an attempt to unionize. Each woman represents how fashion and capitalism can pillage from cultures (the Black women the system rips off, the Chinese factory workers, and the front-of-house employees, which are nearly 20% Latine in the U.S. and are overrepresented in the lowest-paying, front-line roles) and prey on consumers.
“The thing about fashion is that it’s a microcosm of something bigger,” Ackie said. “Because of how material and commerce travel around the world. And how many people it exploits through the cost of making something to how much it costs someone right at the end to then who’s making it and what the conditions are like for them to work in and the carbon imprint it takes.” According to Ackie, exploitation is just one aspect of the issue. It’s also about how culturally, we’ve been sold the idea that our identity is directly tied to the brands we put on our bodies. “But also, fashion is about selling a lifestyle, and you dress how you want to be,” Ackie continued. “So we as consumers have this idea that if I buy this skirt, I’m going to be a different woman. If I can wear those Manolo Blahniks or if I can get that Prada bag, somehow that’s going to do something for me.”
“And some of that is true. It is true that you can be a young dude from Compton and then become Tyler The Creator,” Palmer countered. “That’s the whole dapper thing, and Dapper Dan. People do actually look at you differently and treat you differently and perceive you differently depending on what you wear in fashion. It kind of works and it’s also a problem”
It’s in those intersecting, and sometimes conflicting, ideas — how fashion is an expression of ourselves and also a tool of systemic oppression — where I Love Boosters shines. The contradictions are the point. The bright, fantastical world that director Riley, cinematographer Natasha Braier, and costume designer Shirley Kurata, created acts as a magical backdrop to the bleak messaging. Sometimes, art can do all of the above — be a bold reimagining of the past, a snapshot of the chaos of the present, and a hopeful portrait of the future.
People do actually look at you differently and treat you differently and perceive you differently depending on what you wear in fashion. It kind of works and it’s also a problem.
keke palmer
The Daily Beast didn’t love I Love Boosters and called it “akin to a child’s finger-painting portrait of Che Guevara” (derogatory), but to me, that’s a perfect description of the movie’s strengths. Sure, it’s a bit sloppy and feels like an unfinished thought at times, but the push for a more socialist society in the midst of a system so ingrained in our lives isn’t tidy or perfect. Maybe it is closer to a surrealist sketch of a figure of revolution than an accurate depiction of real life. So what? I’d rather watch a funny takedown of the unfair conditions we’ve been forced to work under that oozes with childlike wonder and unhinged subplots (LaKeith Stanfield’s entire ‘Guy With A Pinky Ring’ character makes me question and love whatever is wrong with Boots Riley) than another unoriginal blockbuster made to prop up the same society structures I Love Boosters critiques.
“Fashion can also be used to rebel against the system,” González said in our conversation. “Whatever you want to say, whether that is cutting all your hair off or putting whatever clothes you want on, it’s a real expression of self.” Paige agreed: “That’s what hip-hop is, that’s what punk is.” That’s also what film can be. Movies like this one, with a clear message that uplifts the marginalized as its heroes and eviscerates the uber-rich as the villains they are, can act as a gateway to larger conversations. Ultimately, I think that’s a great thing.
At the L.A. premiere of I Love Boosters, I asked the cast and other stars walking the red carpet to name the most annoying thing about capitalism. Their answers were funny, irreverent, and real. Liu launched into a 3-minute long diatribe about all the ways in which capitalism harms us all while Bob The Drag Queen told us not to worry since we’re in late-stage capitalism and it will all be over soon anyway.
This compilation has over 600,000 views and 1,300 comments. There are the positive ones, about how refreshing it is to see a question of substance being asked on a red carpet (“Celebrities critiquing capitalism is an asset not a liability” one commenter said) and others that think it’s hypocritical for people with money to comment on a system they benefit from (“asking rich people this just pissed me off” another wrote). Once again, it’s in the dichotomy of these responses that makes what Boots Riley does in his work so important. First of all, most of the people I spoke to don’t have the kind of money people think they do (visibility does not equal wealth) and furthermore, it’s going to take people at every class level to reject the system before we can dismantle it.
In a soundbite that didn’t make the final edit, Stanfield cited the I Love Boosters promotional push to give audiences free gas. On May 12, Palmer and Stanfield hosted a gas giveaway at the Shell gas station on West Pico Boulevard where they took turns at the pump while drivers drove away with full tanks and movie swag. The exorbitant price of gas is just one of the many real ways in which capitalism continues to create divides. What Boots Riley’s anti-capitalist fever dream understands is that in 2026, survival itself has become aestheticized: debt has a look, burnout has a uniform, and class anxiety arrives dressed head-to-toe in designer labels bought on Klarna. What makes the film sting isn’t simply its satire of wealth, but the way it positions fashion as both aspiration and ammunition. The Velvet Gang aren’t stealing clothes because they’re shallow, they’re reclaiming access to beauty in a world where luxury has become a gatekeeping mechanism. That tension — between consumption and resistance — is where I Love Boosters finds its smartest ideas. Riley understands that fashion has long functioned as a language for marginalized communities: a way to signal joy, status, rebellion, and solidarity all at once. The film’s maximalist costumes decorate the story and underpin its thesis.
As corporations borrow the language of activism while union-busting behind the scenes, Riley offers a messy, loud, honest vision of resistance. The film argues that wanting beautiful things under capitalism isn’t necessarily a moral failure; the real failure is a system that rations dignity through price tags.
“Theft is not outside of capitalism; it’s what capitalism was built on – and not even, like, metaphorically,” Riley said in an interview with The Guardian. “The bourgeoisie was no different in that they stole land, stole minerals, stole labor. But that theft is thought of as legal.”
Riley is making me feel a lot better about boosting tank tops from Hollister. But he’s not wrong. Theft and capitalism go together like Keke Palmer and viral memes. Where there is one, you will find the other. In I Love Boosters, fashion is political and the enemy is capitalism itself, not just Demi Moore in a blonde wig. A pair of platform boots or an oversized faux-fur coat can carry the same symbolic weight as a protest sign, particularly when worn by the women capitalism usually renders invisible except as consumers. And I think it’s OK if that message comes from people who may be considered as “doing well” under this system. We were all sold a dream that doesn’t exist.
I was a middle class suburban kid who would have been fine if I was fired from my job shilling “So Cal, so low” jeans at the mall. I was also a worker being paid minimum wage, facing microaggressions and forced to dress the part or pack it up. When Hollister’s parent company, Abercrombie & Fitch was facing lawsuits for discrimination, they promoted me and my other colleagues of color to be the front-of-house greeters. We smiled, said the taglines, and made the company feel better about its blatant racism and exploitation. I Love Boosters is for retail workers who never got to express their rage, for the boosters just trying to make a buck, and for everyone whose lives have been made worse by billionaires just getting richer by the day. Actors are actually some of the best people to critique capitalism because, as I Love Boosters never forgets, survival, especially for working-class women of color, has always required performance as much as perseverance.
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