At any given time, the fashions of about 20 years ago MUST be regarded by all fashionable people as desperately ugly and those of about 30 years ago are permitted to be regarded as kinda hip in a retro sort of way.
The same trendies who are straightfacedly proclaiming today’s fashion as objectively georgeous will be the ones proclaiming the very same thing as undoubtedly objectively ugly tomorrow.
What a dumbass thing is fashion.
…And when I heard those six words I finally realized how old and out of touch I really was.
So be it.
Just as there are old dinosaur rockers who play Uriah Heep records at full blast, there is still a part of me that will always be twenty years old in the middle of the Eighties, crashing though the pit or standing onstage at a Ponk Rawk show, singing “I wanna be a problem, I wanna make you scream… OH-OH-OH!” at the top of my lungs, that knows the best drummer in the world is a friend who flips burgers at the local dive and knows that the best way to handle a skinhead is to stand tall wth knees slightly bent and look them in the eye. And I’ll still know that, to a great extent, all fashions are fundamentally stupid, and the people wearing them are, again to a great extent, just cattle following the herd.
God, I used to hate the so-called “New Wave” fashions of the Eighties, with all the poof hair and plastic junk they sold in the malls. All the same, the styles allowed people to show who they were, their attitudes, their sexuality, their …whatever, in ways that I just don’t see in today’s stuff. Then again, that’s at least part of why kids take on different styles from their elders, to show that they are different. My older siblings who all had long hair and decorated their apartments with Peter Max posters and stuff from Alice in Wonderland probably didn’t understand why my friends and I wore boots and had dayglow spaghetti-colored mohawks and the like, just as I don’t get the people who wear Retro-Seventies crap. Then again, I’d probably have to hang out with folks that are seriously into house music to find anyone as obssessed with their lifestyle as my friends and I were into our stuff, and I don’t have enough time to waste doing that.
No, 1976 replaced those guys with disco. There were a lot of good bands in the Eighties, you just had to look. Think D.O.A., Agent Orange, Soul Asylum, Bauhaus, Meat Puppets or REM, to name a few of the bigger names. Hell, the first time I heard Nirvana I though that they had to be some sort of a nostalgia act.
I’m told this pattern holds true in architecture as well.
I will not defend my two tone jeans or my questionable hair choices. I will admit that I really really liked big mall hair on girls.
I’m a child of the Ronald Regan era. I miss some of the conspicuous consumption and the attitude that bigger is better and a general optimistic attitude. Everything seemed like a big party and the sky was the limit.
Yes there was the cold war, but it didn’t seem as doom and gloom to me as some of the security issues we have today.
Maybe I’m just nostalgic for my wasted youth when all I had to worry about was my hair, what music to listen to, what to wear, and how to get to the next screen on Ms. Pac-man. Not the 1.5 jobs and mortgage of today.
Cheers.
Ugh. The 80s gave us leggings paired with oversized t-shirts/sweatshirts. There is NO look worse than that. Well, a tube-top and leggings on a woman of a certain size is worse, but the leggings t-shirt/sweatshirt combo is a VERY close second.
Yeah, the leg warmers and stirrup pants were hideous, but I liked the denim prairie skirts with the hint of eyelet peeking out at the bottom, paired with the big ruffled shirt. I think that was all I wore in 11th grade (1980-81).
Well, yah, in a “I’m a stripper cum welder screwing my boss sort of way.”
Assuming that a person wanted to look like anything else, they were screwed.
And, if everyone will recal, the 80’s were the decade that spawned the “leggings as daywear” look. For that alone they deserve to be pitted.
Imagine a look that’s SO bad, it doesn’t even look good on a model - now that, is a butt ugly look.
Did you live on a farm?
I was in my 20s in the 80s, and I remember being appalled at the time by the fashions of the day.
Big hair
Thin ties
White socks with shoes (Thank you, Michael Jackson)
Ripped sweatshirts
Members Only jackets
Parachute pants.
Mullets
Bandannas tied around one leg (Thank you, Bruce Springsteen)
And while there was some awesome music back then (The Smiths, X, The Cramps, Bad Religion, Black Flag, The Clash, Big Audio Dynamite, Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel, Run-DMC, Elvis Costello), the AM radio selections SUCKED!
I can’t say that I miss the Reagan era, but there were some good aspects to the 80s–discovering boys, Night Flight on USA, horror movies, being a climbing bum in the national parks.
I don’t have to imagine it. I can Google it:
http://www.revolveclothing.com/productpages/PDC-WJ24.jsp
Give me a waistline or give me…uh…a different pair of pants.
“Danskin…Not just for dancing.” Also for your aunt to go to the mall in.
I remember that denim skirt and ruffled shirt look, BiblioCat. It was probably inspired by some parts Hee Haw and some parts Little House on the Prairie. When I went into grade 7 the colour was burgandy and the slacks were coudoroy. The collars were ruffled and the sleeves were puffed.
Huh…Well, my fave styles were the crop tops and the skirts and pants with the “set in” V shaped waists. VERY flattering if you were hourglassed. I also liked the peplum waisted jackets SANS shoulder pads, even back in the 80s SNIP SNIP out come the shoulder pads.
And I like big hair. Okay, not Dolly Parton big, but to me, curly locks with a little lift beats the HELL out of the “I got my head caught in a woodchipper” Meg Ryan do, or the mom hair poof, OR the flat nothing straight 60s revisited nonstyled style.
But, that’s just me.
PS, when I think “Cute 80s styles” I think Paige from Knot’s Landing, NOT Alexis from Dynasty, or even worse MC Hammer and friends from MTV.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means…
Oops! I forgot this:
Well, my friends and I wanted to be Jennifer Beals in Flashdance.
(Or at least live in an ultra-cool warehouse and dance like that.)
Oh me too. I probably wanted to wear the outfits as well. That doesn’t make it right.
Well, what I mean is that the cropped tops camoflaged a “too big” bust, and showed off a slim waist, and the way the cropped tops were kind of “floaty” above the waist also balanced out the hips making them look smaller.
The V shaped waists accentuated a tight midriff, tiny waist and flat tummy, imho, my best body features (at that age :()…sooooo…Flattering.
Did I spell it wrong?
That’s okay, it wasn’t needed…
