The Jheri curl. Oh, god, the Jheri curl.
In middle school it was cool to pull off the tabs of soda cans and collect them onto necklaces. They were “friendship tabs”. If the pull tab still had the small circle in the middle, it was a “more than friendship” tab.
Also I remember these t-shirts, “Coed Naked Sports”. There were a bunch of different t-shirts for all different sports, all containing equally retarded taglines, stuff like “get your kicks in the grass!” and “rough, tuff and in the buff!” Kids who wore these usually wore Umbros and the girls wore scrunchies around their wrists.
What about the thankfully brief (I even did it, myself) bandana around the leg?
I did mine below the knee, while some guys did theirs above.
Left leg, you were single, right leg, you were dating someone. Or the other way around.
Yeesh, can’t believe I also wore jeans that were so damned tight!
Also in high school:
Acid-wash jeans.
Ripping a hole in one knee of your jeans. (Now they come pre-ripped - I’m all “Back in my day we had to wreck our OWN clothes!”)
Huge baggy Cotton Ginny, Au Coton, Bimini, Roots and Beaver Canoe sweatshirts. There was another popular preppy brand that I can’t remember - started with an M - there was a store in the Eaton’s Centre near the Yonge/Dundas door.
Grade 5 & 6: Net shirts, flourescent socks, fingerless gloves.
I was born in 1981 and grew up in southwestern Michigan. Umbro shorts were big when I was in middle school from about 1991-1994. The most hideous ones had one neon colored leg, one “normal” colored leg and a huge logo on them. I personally preferred when girls wore the white ones as they were practically see-through. Starter jackets were big around that time, too, but they had to be NFL or NBA ones. Only dorks wore MLB ones. The cool/rich kids wore silk shirts that, even at the time, looked ridiculous to me.
Also in middle school, the student council had a vending machine that sold pencils for a quarter each. Some had sports logos and were coveted. “Pretty pencils” were colorful with different designs. It was a crapshoot as to which you’d receive when you turned the crank. If you were unfortunate enough to get a cruddy one, you’d “pencil pop” with someone else – a dumbass game with complicated rules where you’d try to break another person’s pencil before they broke yours. So many idiots would spend all their lunch money before school even started that the administration had to make a rule that you could only buy a pencil at lunch time. That fad only lasted about a year, I think, but I’m sure the student council was rolling in quarters.
I went to an all-boys private Catholic school in 1980s UK.
Please tell me this was just my school, I’ll have more faith in humanity if it is. People used to purposefully scratch the back of their hand again and again and again so as to create a large scab, 1-2 inches long and maybe a half inch wide. Loads of people had it.
While I’ve never heard of this, it’s also not weirder than tattoos or body piercing.
This reminds me of another one in my school: Dolphin (Dolfin?) shorts. Very short athletic shorts with two different color blocks (so the front, for example, would be white on one side and blue on the other, and the back would be the opposite). These were big with the popular girls. I liked the way they looked but I only ever had one pair which I never wore outside the house because I hated the way I looked in shorts. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even have mine until they’d gone past the time when they were popular.
Picture the scene: a British all girls high school in the mid 80s. Bear in mind that British school kids dress in uniform,like this, so most fads were geared around subverting the uniform rules:
> Pushing your knee-high socks down so they bunched around your ankles
> Wearing black fingerless gloves
> Turning the collar of your blazer up
> Wearing your neck tie the wrong way round, so the thin end was on display and the fat end was tucked inside your shirt
> Rolling the waistband of your 1970s style a-line knee high skirt up so you showed as much thigh as possible
> Styling your hair with disgusting green gunk to form the perfect John Taylor look.
> Wearing pin badges on the inside of your blazer so the teachers couldn’t see them. I had five, with the letters ‘D’ ‘U’ ‘R’ ‘A’ ‘N’ on. Natch.
What I remember as the “fashion fads” at my school in my 7-12th grade years in the 1980s is wearing big, nigh oversized dress shirts unbuttoned and untucked over a t-shirt, with black high top sneakers. In cooler weather, a denim jacket was worn over the dress shirt; in the winter, a long 3/4 or full length wool overcoat.
There was a year or two where the “puffy insulated parka jacket/vest” look was around that was the target of the “why are you wearing a life preserver?” joke in Back To The Future (1985), but I don’t think I had one myself (though my Dad definitely did).
Oh yes, and wearing a Jansport type backpack for a school bag slung over one shoulder. I don’t see kids doing that any more so it must’ve been a fad for my era. In fact my own kids wear their bags with both straps, tightened so the back of their pack is up to the nape of their necks, whereas I definitely had the back of my single-loop bag loose enough to bump my butt while walking if I didn’t pull up on the strap with one hand. Which in turn, was that loose so that I could easily grab and loop the bag over my shoulder with one easy motion.
We had something similar. The “f” didn’t stand for “friendship” though.
Not having email or internet was a pretty big fad while I was in high school and college.
Mid-late 80’s - northern Indiana
The soda tabs were “a thing” at our school, too - if you pried one off with the attached circle in one piece - you could trade it in for a kiss (or more) with a member of your preferred gender.
Prairie skirts were in for awhile - the “best” being the kind that buttoned down the front - girls would wear it partially unbuttoned with a frilly petticoat underneath.
Most of the other clothing fads were already mentioned - pegged/tight rolled jeans, Members Only jackets, shaker sweaters over stirrup pants, popped-collar polo shirts, etc.
Born in 1963:
Elementary school: Mood rings. Clacker balls, yo-yos.
Jr. High: Elephant bells (jeans with extreme bell bottoms, looked REALLY stupid after a growth spurt), Waffle Stompers (rough-out sued leather stiff soled mountaineering boots with red laces)
High school: Bell bottoms fading at the end. Disco fashions of all sorts. Athletes were required to wear suits on game days, and they were usually polyester leisure suits! Farrah fawcet hair and Candys (sp?) shoes on the girls. Feathered bangs and center parts on both sexes.
Benetton rugby shirtswere HUGE at my junior high in 1986 or so.
Anyone else do banana clips? Especially good with a nice perm! And of course we did tall bangs. Some people went all the way to sticking straight up. And also with just a tiny fringe left down. Amy Poehlerdemonstrates it well.
Racoon coats were a big thing when I was in college.
Despite The Charleston, I’m guessing early/mid fifties.
27 (about to be 28) here. I remember wearing skorts in elementary school – half shorts, half skirt, all awkward.
Junior high, there was a spaghetti strap shirt craze and if your shirt had sleeves you were a dork.
Hip hugger hot pants
Desert boots with gym socks
Bell bottoms
Peasant shirts
Anything paisley
Gogo boots
Neru jackets
Long straight hair
Mini skirts
Jesus sandals
Garter belts
Halter tops
Graduated in 74 from high school mid Atlantic coast
Crimpers!
Oh God…
Midwest - graduated HS in 88.
Parachute Pants! The more zippers the better
Acid Wash jeans
Bon Jovi Jackets (tassles hanging off sleeves)
Ocean Pacfic
“Tagging” jeans (folding and rolling pants legs)
Vans (shoes)
Trading one shoe with a friend (usually basketball high tops)