"Would Vanessa Hudgens Wear This to Coachella?"
vintage dealers (and the trend experts at Pinterest!) weigh in on festival fashion as Coachella kicks off in the desert.
I’m Emily Stochl🎤 and this is Pre-Loved, an independent, go-to voice on all things resale! This is not another tired “sponsored by SHEIN” Coachella fashion trend report. I’m bringing you independent reporting on the culture & impact of vintage fashion.
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Two weeks ago, while watching fashion-lovers thrift their upcoming Coachella outfits, I came across this TikTok from Pearl (@unaestheticsurferpearlz), which had racked up 2.3 million views. In it, Pearl went vintage shopping in Oceanside, where she picks up fringe boots, white lace dresses, Penny Lane coats, and bangle bracelets — all while asking us the essential question: “would Vanessa Hudgens wear this to Coachella?”
There’s a sudden nostalgia in the air for “Peak Boho” Coachella — why? Afterall, as recently as 2022, Kendall Jenner looked back on her outfits from that time and gave us the now-iconic line: “This was Coachella 2016. This was the vibe at the time!”
Jenner said she wouldn’t wear those looks again — “to Coachella, or anywhere.” And for a couple years, it seemed, these “too-recent” Coachella microtrends were a bit cringe. Glamour even called Hudgens’s disc belt, pictured below, “a crime against fashion.” Yet, a decade later, I saw that specific belt referenced in countless inspo TikToks. This is a shift.
Coachella started in Indio, California in 1999, drawing inspiration from the music and aesthetics of Woodstock, Burning Man, and ‘90s indie festivals. For the first half of its lifespan, the festival existed in a pre-social media world. But — beginning with that “Peak Boho” era — millions of onlookers each year experienced Coachella’s second chapter largely through our phone screens.
By last year’s festival season, the tide had clearly shifted on Coachella nostalgia. What was once considered cringey was now being rebranded as iconic — the mid-2010s were fondly referred to as “peak Coachella.”
And watching this year’s flood of TikTok “Coachella Outfit Inspo” montages, it was clear: the girls really missed this era of Coachella.
It’s not the 60s and 70s, or even the ‘90s, sparking the festival’s nostalgia these days. As hard as it may be for millennials (like me!) to believe, it’s a much more recent past: like living in a Spotify world and longing for an iPod while vinyl records sit there on the shelf.
Intrigued by all the throwbacks, I reached out to some vintage dealers — because if anyone has their finger on the fashion pulse, it’s them.
Lindsey, the dealer behind the plus-size vintage brand Fat & Habitat, remembered her own 2010s Coachella moments. Specifically, she recalled thrifting her 2015 festival looks at Buffalo Exchange: white tunic mini dresses, batwing sleeves, denim cutoffs, and wide-brimmed hats. At the time, she said, it was hard to find “funky stuff” in plus sizes, so she got creative — even DIY-ing her own denim shorts to stretch her budget, where she happily joined the crowds jamming to Tame Impala and Hozier in the desert.
Sure, anyone can go buy the same Amazon concho belt (and many people did this year!), but secondhand-sourcers are after something a little different, and that’s where the magic lives for me.
First, we mood board, then we treasure hunt. According to Pinterest, users start searching for Coachella inspiration on the platform as early as January. Gen Z accounts for 45% of all Coachella-related searches, with searches like the “Vintage Rockstar Aesthetic” up 479% this year.
I spoke to Sydney Stanback, Global Trends & Insights Lead at Pinterest, to learn more about their 2025 Festival Fashion Trends report — part of their second annual partnership with Coachella. She told me, “it’s less about recreating the past, and more about reinventing it.”
While Gen Z is reviving trends from eras they didn’t live through, they’re also engaging in what she calls “identity editing” — “mixing, matching, and layering aesthetics to express who they are in that moment, curating a version of themselves that can shift and evolve as freely as their style does.”
I called up Emily Katz, founder of Voulez Vous, a rare designer vintage showroom and rental archive in LA, and caught her in between the twenty Coachella rental appointments she was handling each week leading up to the festival. I wanted to know what her vintage-loving clientele was after.
“I’m seeing so many Cavalli runway photos,” she said of the Pinterest mood boards clients were bringing in. “People have been looking for leather pants, and and these insane Cavalli fringe pants.” She followed up with a text, sending photos from Cavalli runway collections spanning 2004, 2011, and 2017:
When I asked her about the “Coachella glory days,” Katz laughed. She had watched that quintessential Vanessa Hudgens fashion era happen from afar, back when she was still living in Boston. “I always dreamed of going to Coachella,” she said. “I moved to LA with no job — classic story — just me, a Honda Civic, and like $3,000 in savings.” But she made it to the festival that first year, and Coachella has ended up being a full-circle moment for her.
During the pandemic, Katz worked as an influencer — and eventually, out of financial stress, she started doing OnlyFans. “I don’t know if a lot of people know this, actually,” she said, “but I started doing OnlyFans because I was broke and stressed, juggling multiple jobs — like a lot of people were during the pandemic.” That ended up being a turning point: it provided the funds to start sourcing rare vintage pieces and, for the first time, Katz traveled to Europe to build what would become the Voulez Vous archive.
On one of those trips, she visited Pomchili, a Parisian showroom (now relocated to Antwerp), where she scored a 2004 Dior by Galliano set from the “Dior Hardcore” collection. Along the way, Katz shared her archival finds on TikTok, and by Coachella season, stylists began to take notice for their own client rentals.
In 2023, sister celebrity stylists, Chloe and Chenelle, reached out — they were dressing Kourtney Kardashian for Coachella and wanted her to wear that Dior set.
Katz is always honored when people want to wear Voulez Vouz pieces during special moments, but in the early days, she admits she said yes to too many gifted collaborations. “I was too generous,” she told me. “I was loaning pieces just for tags.”
As Coachella has grown, it’s become practically synonymous with influencer culture — and with that comes a flood of fast fashion, sponsored looks, and endless “gifted collabs.” Not only do we get bored of the sameness this culture creates, the model that’s built for fast fashion doesn’t work well for vintage archives, where every piece is one-of-a-kind.
Now, especially for Coachella where the desert elements are harsh, Katz charges higher rental fees for in-demand items. “I’m not Revolve, Princess Polly, or FashionNova,” she said. “I purchase these pieces out of my own pocket, and it’s a risk to rent them out — especially just for tags.”
Even with “add to cart”-sameness casting a long shadow over festival fashion, it’s refreshing to see vintage cool-girls choose secondhand — and with it, originality. They’re proving you don’t need to rely on disposable, “single-use” outfits to pull a ‘fit.
In fact, Pearl’s thrifting videos caught the eye of mocktail brand Recess, who offered to cover her Coachella tickets this year. She took her thrifted looks with her.
Likewise, Zoi Lerma— who’s been sharing a stream of Coachella TikToks to her six million followers — posted about vintage shopping for the festival this year. She visited Voulez Vouz, where she snagged what Katz called the most in-demand, hottest piece from the archive.
“I swear the girlies are fighting over that piece,” Katz laughed. It’s a micro-mini lace skirt attached to a leather belt, complete with eyelet grommets and ribbon lacing — a standout on loan from fellow dealer Mackii Shaye of Little Oyster Club.
It would be easy to say that I think “Boho Revival” is going to be the biggest fashion trend at Coachella this year — after all, these cool undone looks were all over Fashion Month in 2025. But really, it’s not about one specific era or aesthetic.
Bigger than any trend, what we’re craving is authenticity and originality. Carefully selecting a pre-loved outfit fulfills that desire to be one of one.
That’s what makes it so fun to watch Pearl car camping at Coachella in a beat-up truck, playing dress-up in thrifted finds. It brings to mind those Vanessa Hudgens glory-days: she once said her most iconic Coachella looks came together during the years she camped in an RV, with no mirror and a chaotically-packed suitcase — nothing pre-planned, just a whim.
It’s true you can probably buy your entire mood board with just one click, but the most stylish festival-goers don’t copy-paste. They’re choosing a more “collected” approach; building outfits that feel unmistakably theirs, with no fear of bumping into fifty other girls in the same SHEIN crochet crop top.
As Stanback put it: “What stands out to me is how they’re not defined by just one single style or aesthetic. They’re blending influences from a variety of subcultures and eras to create something entirely their own.”
Now 35 and a new mom, Hudgens skipped the festival this year, for the second in a row. But did post this to her Instagram Stories, with — what I imagine to be — a knowing-laugh:
Vintage-lovers, this week I’m taping a podcast with Sydney Stanback and the team at Pinterest, all about Coachella, vintage fashion, and trend prediction. This is your chance to ask questions — I suggest getting their thoughts on the “Boho Revival,” hot takes on originality and authenticity, and what era of fashion nostalgia is next on the horizon. Drop ‘em here:
Thank you for reading! You can find me across the internet on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads! 💛 - Emily