I lived in South Miami (Kendall, really), and while I never had a pair of Z. Cavaricci pants, almost every other kid did between 6th and 8th grades (1990-92 for me).
I had never heard of these, until I briefly dated a guy around 2000 who was so proud of his that he wore them out every weekend. He was 34, IIRC. I thought they looked a little silly on him, and now I see I was right. 
I had a fem-mullet. Not a severe one. I was just a dumb eighteen-year-old who wanted to be David Bowie.
Mind you, that was only a year ago. This year I’ve done the Brian Jones cut, which looks even more ridiculous on a girl. Now I’m a dumb nineteen-year-old who wants to be a Rolling Stone.
Next year, roll in the Keith Moon…I can feel it coming already.
The most ridiculous thing is, these aren’t even my generation’s trends and I stick out. A lot. They’re not even “inspired by”; they’re painstakingly exact.
My flatmate and I got drunk, you see. I got the Brian then, and he got the Sid Vicious.
I remember his father telling us, “get your own culture.” I had to agree with him.
Back in time, when I was fourteen, I wanted the most enourmous platform shoes I could find. It was the season of the Spice Girls and I wanted to be cool. At least my taste in music has improved since then, even if I haven’t lost my vulnerability to silly haircuts and shoes.
Everything said here for females from the mid 80’s to late 90’s. And I only last year convinced my husband to toss his acid washed jeans. He’s 35, and still wears shirts he had in high school, not good ones either. His G No AT&T shirt needs to go!
One I haven’t seen mentioned yet is sweater dresses. In Bill Cosby designs. What were we thinking?
I went back to St. Louis in 1988 from Ventura, CA (just NE of Los Angeles), and our hosts complimented me on my “Jams”. It was the first time I’d ever heard the word. They were just “surf shorts” to me. I later saw the term in a Calvin and Hobbes strip.
Mine didn’t go below my knees.
Only now do some of my “shorts” go below my knees. I’ve given in to the concept that in “modern” times, fashion changes so fast that you either look like a dork now or later, and later is better, to some extent. And I wore shorts in high school that were about three inches below my crotch. As did every other boy in PE.
Oh, and often combined with that were the “Michael Cooper” knee socks.
I remember thinking “Ohhhhhhhhhhh if the 70’s ever come back we are in trouble” but that’s cause I’m a teenager of the 80’s.
It is a living nightmare that aspects of the 80’s seem to be coming back (puffball skirts anyone!?). The 80’s absoloutely is where taste went to die!
The things we wore! The horrors we saw! The horrors we were!
Watch a video from the 80’s and CRINGE (though I personally think Bono was looked better before he was the fly). The 80’s HAS to be the worst dressed decade EVER (and I grew up thinking that about the 70’s/60’s) but everything was hideous in the 80’s and we just went along with it 
I miss the fade.
Pipped by LouisB-
We’re about the same age. My mother always wanted me to dress in the current trends. So she bought me some bell bottom jeans when I was 7 or 8, which I hated so much that I hid them in the bottom of my closet so I didn’t have to wear them.
In 1981, my grandmother made me a pair of big, billowy, blue corduroy knickers. Of course, since my grandmother made them, my mom *made * me wear them to school…with a white ruffled shirt to boot. I was mortified that day at school. I looked like an 11 year old pirate. At least I wasn’t a boy.
Gosh, where to start.
I loved snap bracelets. They were a dollar each when and where I was buying them, but they were made of metal instead of plastic as I recall.
My favorite outfit in 1987 was a big red sweater and black stirrup pants. I was eight.
My second favorite outfit was a pair of Guess jeans (thrift store!), acid washed, skinny legged with the zipper at the ankle, and an Esprit sweatshirt.
I had several blue jean skirts and one of those tiered ruffle skirts – you remember the ones? Two or three tiers of skirt, usually in polka dot, usually with the tiers starting some inches below the actual waistline. I desperately wanted white with black polka dots but Mother made me one black with white polka dots. I still wore it until it fell apart. And I adored my denim and white cotton skirt – like a pair of blue jeans to the top of the legs or so and then white cotton for the rest of the way.
I desperately wanted to be able to have one of those pony tails at the top of my head that bobbled around. Those were wildly cool.
I wore jellies. Loved my jellies. Mother liked them because they were cheap and my feet grew like mad so I might actually grow out of them before they wore out.
Let’s see, what fashion crap trends did I fall victim too in my youth? (For reference- I am 31)
In no particular order
-Jelly Shoes
-vertical bangs and big hair thanks to Aqua Net and Stiff Stuff
-tight rolled jeans
-slouch socks- in layers no less and color coordinated with everything
-banana clips
-huge hoop earrings
-pretty much anything from The Limited (riding pants, big sweaters with turtlenecks etc…back before it was what it is now)
-boxy jackets
-stretch/stirrup pants with the above mentioned slouch socks [shudder]
-Bennetton
-Z. Cavaricci jeans
-skinny jeans with zippers and bows
-jelly bracelets
-Hypercolor shirts
-wrestling shoes
-I did own 1 sweater dress… from Bennetton
-a pair of electric blue “jeans” from Express (I did really love those pants. I miss them sometimes)
-that hair thing we did with embroidery floss-like a friendship bracelet for the hair
-friendship bracelets
-“best friends” necklaces
-Oakley Frogskin sunglasses (I still have them in a drawer somwhere)
-Ray Ban Wayfarers (I have these still too)
-Keds
That is about all I can bear to think about right now. Talk about having things to be ashamed about…
Oh yes. My mom thought the Cosby kids were the height of fashion, and I ended up wearing a lot of awful things. And topped it off with the poofy permed hair. We would take a giant curling iron to the sides around the ear line and spray the hair wrapped around it, making a nice horizontal swath of hair with tight curls hanging off it. My curling iron had quite the disgusting layer of gunk on it.
Also in college I wore hot pants with tights.
Oh man, if you mean those ankle boots with the laces that started down at the toe…I loved those. I’d wear them again if I had some.
The hair . . . meh.
What about those glasses!?
(If you still have them then, uh, they look great on you! Really!)
That would be them.
Oh dear, the memories–how they burn!
High school–elephant bell bottoms that were so long you’d walk about three inches off the bottom hem. Not content with the already monstrously huge bells as purchased, we’d split them up both side seams and sew in triangles of bandana fabric. Sometimes we’d lay them out on the sidewalk and splash bleach on them in random patterns, w00t!
The ginormous bottom parts of the pants were offset by the extreme hip hugger cut of the tops–one stylin’ pair of hot pink cord elephant bells I owned had a zipper that was exactly one inch long. Good thing I was young at the time, because nowadays I’d have to shave in order to wear pants like that! This was often worn with a tied up shirt and a belly button jewel.
Sizzler dresses–micro mini dresses with matching panties in super bright, busy patterns. My, what a bunch of little sluts we must’ve looked!
Six inch tall platform wedge sandals–how I avoided being picked up at every street corner I do not know.
Then I got hippie and started going for the tie dye, batik and Indian cotton flowy look. Still wear this sort of thing quite often, in Portland you can get away with it, especially if you’re of “a certain age.”
Shoulder pads later on, oh yes. Linebacker look, SO sexy…
The worst one I ever went for, though, was the poodle perm. WTF was I THINKING?? :rolleyes:
I grew up in the 70’s, so my parents dressed my in some goofy stuff. I remember a red t-shirt with a blue sleeve and white sleeve, something like that. There were 2 or 3 different shirts like that with different contrasting bright colors. I remember a button-up long sleeve shirt made of silky cloth with train scene print on it. Coudoroy pants. Genuine imitation Nikes (the stripes pointed down.)
Also in the 1980s I had a light blue Member’s Only jacket.
Oh, and when I was about 12 I went through a country music phase and wore a crappy brown fuzzy cowboy hat.
Holy crap are you me? I wore everything you described as a youth in the 70’s. The only difference is I had a red fuzzy cowboy hat and wore it when I was age 4-6.
I would wear an Old Navy fleece tech vest, a pink baby tee, stonewashed flare low-rise jeans, and tan Birkenstock clogs everywhere. I wore and still wear Love’s Baby Soft, too. That scent just transcends generations.
You had the silky train-print shirt? Mine was mostly brownish colors, but I remember it had a black locomotive on it. LOL, I think my grandmother actually made that one for me, probably from a pattern bought at Roses or K-Mart.
Red cowboy hat, boy I bet you looked dumb!