Dynasty, Dallas, Spinning on your head....
Shoulder pads
Under the influence of TV shows like Dallas and Dynasty shoulder pads became the ultimate in executive power dressing for women. As female identity grew in the workplace, so did the width of their shoulders. A bad metaphor if you ask me.
It all had the effect of making women look like upside down triangles. Although, from a male POV I'd rather see wide shoulders and small hips than narrow shoulders and a fat ass.
Nethertheless, by its nature a shoulder pad created a smooth line over the natural hollows of the collar bone area. Women noticed that shoulder pads smoothed out body postural imperfections and they liked the effect.
If you want to create this look, rather than stuffing bits of foam in the jacket, its easier to just leave the coathanger in.
Big Hair
There was a rather large wasted effort in the 80s finding a replacement for CFCs. To save the Ozone Layer all we had to do was wait for this particular fashion to die out. Sales in hairspray would have dropped and thus our CFC output would have declined.
Big hair was not unique to the 80s, the 60s had the beehive and the 70s had the afro, we 80s kids had the mullet, I think we were short changed.
During the 1980s, big hair became a more diverse trend. The New Romantics competed for the tallest hair with the scariest of angles. The mullet, and "glam metal hair" was popular with rock musicians and the big perm was a favourite of the pop girlies. But they all had one thing in common - Volume.
Depending on the specific style, hairstyles in the big hair categories may require a number of styling, cutting, or treatment techniques. Styling of big hair styles often requires backcombing and the liberal application of styling aids such as hair spray and hair gel, often in combination with the use of hair dryers. Crimping irons, perms, hair rollers, or other techniques may also be required.
Leg warmers
Leg warmers actually have a sensible use beyond looking daft. When Worn by dancers they are functional pieces of clothing used to keep the lower legs warm. Anyone who can shift their fat ass off the sofa will tell that exercise is easier with warm muscles.
In the early 1980s partly due to the aerobics craze and partly due to films like Flashdance and Fame they became popular with teenage girls as everyday clothing.
Combined with the neon colours favourable in the 80s they were quite a sight
However, they had retreated back into the dance studios by the end of the decade.
Breakdancing
Ok, this wasn't a fashion but a fad that started in the 1970s.
Widely attributed to the hip-hop movement among black and Puerto Rican youths of the Bronx in NYC, it relies on movements associated with musical breaks, hence the name. Breakdancing became a way for street gangs in ghettos to settle disputes, by out-dancing each other with moves that were more original, more complicated and more dangerous moves. Usually it would end up in a rumble anyway.
This popularisation happened in the late 70s and early 80s and was the theme behind movies such as Flashdance, Beat Street and Breakin'.
Breakdancing involves spinning on the knees, head, hands and elbows, mock fighting moves, actual fighting, and pantomime. It is generally unstructured and improvised and like any type of strenuous exercise the risks associated are overemphasized.
Types of move include, the Toprock, Drops, Downrock, Freezes (the end position), Windmills, Flares, Spins. Break dancing has loose associations with Body popping and Robot dancing.
The B-Boys would also have their own fashion. Breakdancers of the 1980s typically sported flat-soled Adidas, Puma, or Fila shoes with thick, elaborately patterned laces; breakdancing crews would have matching caps, and nylon tracksuits were worn due to their low friction.
Hypercolour T-shirts
How many of us grabbed somebody's breasts while they had on a Hypercolour T-Shirt? Go on, hands up.
They started knocking about in the late 80s and several colour choices were available until the early 90s when the Hypercolour clothing range disappeared faster than a scouser when theres work to be done.
They started one colour but when heat was added (hair dryer, hot breath, said amusingly placed hands)they changed colour for a short time.
The only problem was that once your mum chucked them in the wash with the towels, the heat would totally shag up the colouring and it would look more like a tramp had pissed on you than any chameleonic fashion statement.
Stonewash Jeans
Why would you buy (or nag your parents into buying) battle scarred denim that looked ten years older than it was when there was a perfectly good pair of dark denim jeans on the rack next to it? For the less observant, that was a rhetorical question, I'm no fashion expert and I opine that all things are cyclical but there must be some unwritten rule built into the quantum fabric of the universe that stonewash has always looked better than any other colour of denim (except maybe black, ninja clothes are black so black jeans must be also cool by association).
Stonewashing involved the literal use of large stones to roughen up the fabric being processed and gave the faded look of the stonewash. This also gave them a softness and flexibility to the otherwise quite rigid fabric. By 1989 a technique called 'Bio-stoning' was introduced, which relied on enzymes to modify the fabric, so the stonewashed jeans you wear today haven't actually been stonewashed at all.
Introduced in the early 80s stonewashing lead the way for acid washing, also known as snow washing, which used pumice soaked in chlorine as the stone. This gave a much more uneven mottled effect. You were only truly cool if you had a matching snow-wash jacket. I had a pair of snow-wash jeans in the mid 80s but I ripped them when I fell out of a tree.
Which leads onto the next jeans trend. This was born in the 70s with the punk revolution and spilled over into the 80s. Not only were faded and beat up jeans in, they were preceded and concurrent with jeans with big holes in them. As with most fashion, it was fairly pointless, but on a hot summer day, a bit of breeze blowing around the betty swollocks would have its advantages.
Finally that brings us to the totally retarded fashion, and I'm ashamed the 80s spawned it, of bleached jeans. WTF! They just look like you've done a really bad job of whitewashing a wall.
Mohawk Hair
A short lived fad in the 60s became common in the punk subculture of the late 70s and in particular the early 80s.
A simple concept really, you shave both sides leaving a strip down the middle which you usually whack more gel on than you would a Vietnemese jungle (or if your name is Mary, an undisclosed bodily fluid) to make it stand up and defy gravity. If you are of the punk persuasion, you colour it, multicolour it, spike it, fan it, you name it.
There are many variations, the Bi-hawk (which I once sported when clubbing), the Tri-hawk, the Chinny hawk, a Crosshawk, Fauxhawk, the Frohawk, the Chickenhawk, Liberty spikes, the Reverse Mohawk (also known as Baldness)and the Sidehawk. Ok one of those is made up, see if you can guess.
Made famous by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver and Mr.T in Rocky and The A-Team. Good for geeting people to stare at you. Bad for getting people to take you seriously.
Spandex
Either the worlds greatest or the worlds worst invention, depending whos figure is squeezed into it. Put someone like Kylie in spandex, and the world's greatest backside is a pleasure to view. Put someone like Jo Brand in spandex and fuck me I'm blind, and if I didn't go blind I'd gouge my own eyes out.
Boys, I advise you now, beware the woman whose spandex leggings are a little snug. They're like a can of expanding foam, once out of the package it just keeps growing.
A synthetic fibre also known as elastane invented as early as 1959; (and believe or not) spandex is an anagram of expands. Lycra is the most famous brand associated with it.
Spandex leggings became popular with rock and metal bands of the 80s. The spandex-jockeys such as Bon Jovi, Scorpions, Poison, Queen etc wore them because it did not restrict them on stage, they could perform high kicks and rest their feet on monitors. Madonna also helped bring them into the public eye.
Batwing Jumper
I think bat wings look quite good, a pointless fashion, but pleasant all the same.
There's not much to describe, the sides of the top joined the bottom of the sleeves, making you look like a bat (sort of).
A fabulous solution to sweaty armpits.
Parachute Pants
Not something you wear when you leap out a perfectly good aircraft, and certainly has no transformer like ability to be actually used as a parachute, they got the name because of the the material used to make them. (i.e. Synthetic Nylon)
In the early 80s, they were tight, and shiny. Early break dancers used them because they could endure the contact with the break dancing surface while maintaining the low friction required for the 'downrock' routines.
In the later 80s they went baggy to allow more flexibiilty with dance moves. They declined in popularity in the shit 90s decade and were of the source of much piss-taking, like flares were in the 80s. They often came with an overabundance of pockets, very useful for scouse shoppers.
Members Only Jackets
So what exactly did you become a member of? And given that everyone seemed to have one, it can't have been a particularly exclusive club now can it? But thats fashion for you - baaaahhh.
First introduced in several colours in 1981 their popularity rose like an ex-con visiting a Thai brothel and fell like the same con who realised said brothel employed only ladyboys.
The brand name included several other types of clothing so it is likely that you just remember the style, a cotton/polyester jacket with nylon lining, elasticated waist and wrists, a zip up front and a couple of snap buttons at the collar.
People say you either love them or you hate them, I'm fairly ambivalent. I don't like the elasticated bits, but the lightness of the jacket is very handy for keeping a breeze or light shower off without cooking you underneath.
Neon clothes
If a decade could be described by colour, the 40s would be dark colours splattered with red, the 50s some sort of blue, the 60s a collection of psychadelic colours, the 70s brown, the 80s would be neon, the 90s brown with a yellow tinge and the noughties would be green even though it has no reason to be.
Can a colour define an attitude of a period in time? only in a simplistic sense. The bright, glow in the dark, stand out from the crowd colours can perhaps be seen as a symbol of the confidence of the time, reflecting a freedom from convention that the 60s were known for. Or it could just be down to the fact that technology had advanced enough to make it possible to mass manufacture neon goods. Who knows? Who cares?
But neon clothing and accessories are an icon of the 80s and fluorescent clothing was associated with cool, summer themes like surfing and the beach. Fluorescent clothing included t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, shoelaces, hair scrunchies.
The fad began to die down a little in the early 90s.
Wayfarer Sunglasses
The eyewear of choice for the 1980s cool dude.
I first remember seeing them in John Hughes movies and later in The Blues Brothers (even though The Blues Brothers came first) but some research makes the case that they were made popular by Tom Cruise in 1983's Risky Business.
Wayfarers were not only seen on screen but many celebrities (Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Rob Lowe, Madonna etc) were frequently seen sporting a pair.
Wayfarers have never really gone out of fashion and you can still get them today. Although today's product line includes various different colours, the classic black is another 80s great.
Swatch Watch
Commonly misconceived as being a contraction of 'Swiss watches', where they hailed from, but in fact was marketed as 'Second watches' with the express purpose of being casual and relatively disposable.
Launched in 1983, they really enjoyed popularity in the mid 80s, particularly in the US, as a mainstream fashion statement.
You could buy various colours of interchangeable wristbands and watch faces, pointless watch 'guards', ones that you could wear in your hair (ponytails), and there was the pop-swatch which you could attach to clothing. The Swatch was the accessory that had accessories.
Ownership of swatches was directly proportional to 'coolness', the more you had of this crazy fashion, the more Fonz like you were.
Jelly Shoes
The material used for Jelly shoes was invented after World War II when there was a leather shortage in Europe. (German occupation of most of the continent? 100s of millions of pairs of lederhosen? *shudder*)
They were a flat, open, flip flop type shoe that got their name from the type of rubber that was used to make them - a porous PVC rubber. Coming in a large range of zany colours, they also were also occasionally glittered, which appealed to younger children.
By all accounts they were hard and uncomfortable and left you with blisters. If your feet got sweaty then they slipped off or your feet got covered in crap. They were cheaper than a Thai hooker though.
Polo Shirts and the Preppie look
To understand this look you need to know where it came from. Kids with ambition and brains (and more than likely, money) who were on their way to College (University) would actually dress like they cared about their appearance. As these kids would likely attend 'prep' schools, its not a far stretch of logic to see where 'preppie' came from.
Items of clothing in the 'Preppie' armoury would be things like blazers (the most uncomfortable clothing known to man), button down shirts, polo shirts, dress shoes, nice trousers, skirts for women, and dress shoes. Then to top it off a jumper would be casually draped over the shoulders. Wearing the collars up would be a must, as would pastel colours.
The 'Preppie' would become 'Yuppie' after graduation.
Side Ponytails
I guess this was just one of those cyclical fashion things that people do to be different from the norm. Normal ponytails would be down the back of the head. Poking it out of the side of the head would just be rad or bodaciously different. I expect I'll see it again as a fashion before too long. The other possibility is that was related to 80s style big hair that had a tendency to go up instead of down. At least side ponytails make better sex handles.
Metal/Rock Hair
Closely related to the 'Big Hair' stylings of the 1980s, the plethora of rock and metal bands of the 80s carried on where their 70s counterparts left off, with ludicrously oversized hair which they still sport today. I'm no hair Nazi, but long hair on a dude just looks crap.
The hair could be straight, boufant, greasy, mulletted, blonde, black, blue, bouncy, smelly, and was adorned by every rocker from Bon Jovi to Twisted Sister. The musical genre represented by long haired musicians has been pejoratively/affectionately (delete as required by your taste) labled 'hair metal'.
Its definitely a hair style that resonates with the 80s, and those in question were at least part of a rich culture of rock, which can be more than can be said for the 'rock' offerings of today.
Frankie says T-Shirts
Such a simple advertising/merchandising idea. Truly deserving of its place in 80s folklore. Take one currently 'hot' band and spew out millions of cheap white T-Shirts which just say things like 'Frankie Says Relax' or 'Frankie Says War Hide Yourself'. Low cost, high volume, big markup, greed driven, money making genius. I love it.
Make Up of the 80s
In the 80s, women literally painted their faces with the stuff. Out with the subtle 'make it look like you're not wearing any' approach and in with the 'make it so bloody obvious the most trampy looking is the best' approach. Bold eyes and accentuated cheek bones was the order of the day. If your face didn't look halfway clownish, you hadn't quite achieved the look yet.
80s makeup was a reflection of the times, everything was big and bold. 80s makeup was imposing and almost surreal, it had an unreal feel to it. The best part was it made women look dirtier and more promiscuous. Some suggest it was a way for women to assert themselves. Even some men started to wear it, though I'm doubting whether Poison and Twisted Sister were actually male.
Colours used in the 80s: Blue, green, mauve, fuchsia, teal, purple and orange. Cheeks were heavily blushed, really noticable eyeshadow was lathered on and eyeliner was applied by the trowel load. Madonna even made having a mole on your face trendy, although I take the Uncle Buck approach to facial warts ("here's a quarter, go downtown and have a rat knaw that thing off your face").
I'm blatantly robbing the below guide from somewhere else, I forget where, so if its yours, good work and thanks.
How to Apply Eighties Style Makeup
1. Begin with a cleansed and moisturized face.
2. Apply corrections as needed for the eye area and correct areas of redness.
3. Eighties makeup emphasized matte foundation that matched the skin tone leaving no line of demarcation. Bronzer was also popular. Try brushing bronzer over the foundation for a tanned appearance.
4. Apply loose powder to set.
5. Line the upper lid in black.
6. Apply a fuchsia shadow to the mobile eyelid. Then, apply a paler pink or white shadow to the arch of the brow as a highlighter. You can use blue and white shadow or blend fuchsia and orange for a fun evening look.
7. Apply black mascara.
8. Brows were bushy in the 80s. Groom and brush.
9. Line the lips using a fuchsia liner slightly exaggerated and apply fuchsia lipstick.
10. Apply pink rouge to the cheeks.
