'I Love Boosters' Is The Only Real Fashion Film This Year

Every studio is currently obsessed with securing official luxury house partnerships for their press tours, but Boots Riley just made a movie where high fashion is treated exclusively as stolen currency.

Neon’s I Love Boosters has officially arrived, centering on a ring of professional shoplifters—"boosters"—who coordinate to rip off a cutthroat luxury fashion maven (played by Demi Moore). Directed by Riley and starring Keke Palmer and Naomi Ackie, the film uses the mechanics of high-end retail theft to construct a sharp, deeply anti-capitalist heist narrative. While the discourse is focusing on the rapid-fire dialogue and the surrealist visual touches Riley established in Sorry to Bother You, the actual masterstroke is the film's wardrobe department.

The Anti-Aspirational Haul

Most fashion-adjacent cinema treats garments as aspirational totems. You are supposed to want the clothes. I Love Boosters actively strips the reverence away from the luxury label. When Keke Palmer’s character sweeps a rack of designer coats into a foil-lined booster bag, the film isn't romanticizing the silhouette; it's logging the street value. The styling in this film operates completely opposite to the "quiet luxury" trend that choked my timeline for the last two years. This is loud, chaotic, and aggressively commodified.

The Weaponized Archival

Then you have Demi Moore. Playing a ruthless industry gatekeeper, her wardrobe is stiff, architectural, and intentionally restrictive. The film creates a visual binary: the wealthy wear fashion as armor, and the boosters wear fashion as camouflage. Moore's character is styled in pristine archival looks that feel practically embalmed, contrasting entirely with the fluid, mismatched, heavily layered aesthetics of the boosters who are fencing her life's work.

Subverting the "Get Ready With Me" Economy

There is a brilliant, kinetic sequence midway through the film that perfectly mimics the pacing of a TikTok clothing haul, except everything being modeled is fenced merchandise. Riley is drawing a direct, uncomfortable line between the influencer economy—where audiences consume fashion hauls purely as digital content—and the underground retail theft rings that actually redistribute that exact same merchandise on the street level.

Where This Slots In

We are at the tail end of the "Eat the Rich" cinematic cycle. For the last four years, we've had movies and shows that point a camera at wealthy people behaving badly on yachts or in fine-dining restaurants, expecting us to applaud just because the rich look miserable.

I Love Boosters abandons that passive critique. It isn't interested in watching the fashion elite suffer existential dread; it is interested in physically liquidating their assets. The global fashion industry constantly tries to co-opt "punk" and "subversive" aesthetics to sell $1,200 distressed t-shirts. Boots Riley just handed them a film that actually subverts their entire economic model, and it is going to be fascinating to watch the high-fashion magazines try to write editorial spreads about a movie that explicitly advocates for stealing from them.

Briefs

• The Film: I Love Boosters (2026), released by Neon.

  
  

• The Director: Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You, I'm a Virgo).

  
  

• The Cast: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, LaKeith Stanfield, and Demi Moore.

  
  

• The Premise: A crew of professional shoplifters (boosters) target a tyrannical fashion industry figurehead.

FAQ

What exactly is a "booster"?

In retail theft terminology, a booster is a professional shoplifter who steals high-value merchandise specifically to resell it to a "fence," rather than for personal use.

Is this movie a sequel to Sorry to Bother You?

No. It is an entirely original narrative, though it shares Boots Riley’s distinct blend of magical realism, dark comedy, and aggressive anti-capitalist critique.

Are the luxury brands featured in the movie real?

The film relies heavily on fictionalized analogs to avoid copyright blocks and brand-safety vetoes, allowing Riley to brutally critique the fashion houses without triggering a corporate lawsuit from LVMH.