A 1980s Childhood (2 page)

When Madonna burst on to the music scene in 1983 her outrageous dress sense caused a sensation which inspired as many as it outraged. Madonna was certainly to blame for a sharp increase in the number of horrified fathers telling their daughters, ‘You’re not going out dressed like that!’

In the early days, Madonna often wore short skirts over leggings with fishnet gloves, rubber bracelets, bows in her messy, bleached-blonde hair (with dark roots), as well as headbands, long strings of beads and lace ribbons. But as she moved into her ‘Like a Virgin’ phase, she clearly felt that her accessories were the most important part of her outfit and began ditching her clothing, bit by bit, until she was left in just her underwear along with some long lace gloves, a few bracelets and a Boy Toy belt. Alarmingly for parents, this actually inspired many young girls to start wearing bustiers or brassieres as outer garments, often accompanied by some large crucifix necklaces.

While this particular fashion trend was fairly extreme and limited mainly to attention-seekers, Madonna’s influence was widespread and women of all ages began wearing short, tight, lycra miniskirts and tubular dresses, along with bolero-style jackets and lace gloves, often with the fingers chopped off. As for the new trend of wearing legwarmers as a fashion accessory, we can’t blame Madonna this time, but pop culture is guilty again with inspiration inevitably drawn from the new genre of dance films such as
Fame
(1980),
Flashdance
(1983),
Footloose
(1984) and
Dirty Dancing
(1987). Around the time
Flashdance
hit the box offices, teenage girls around the world that had never previously been interested in dance started buying legwarmers to wear over their leggings, jeans or tights.

Flashdance
also gave rise to the ripped sweatshirt look that turned an ordinary grey sweatshirt into a fashion classic. Jennifer Beals, the lead actress in
Flashdance
, famously wore a grey sweatshirt with a large neck hole on the poster advertising the film and the large neck hole meant that the sweatshirt could slip down to show one bare shoulder. This was a fairly easy do-it-yourself fashion and many perfectly good sweatshirts were ripped up to emulate the look. Apparently, Beals said that the ripped sweatshirt look was a complete accident and came about when her sweatshirt shrank in the wash and she had to cut a large hole at the top so she could get it on again. Sounds a little unlikely to me, since the sweatshirt looked extremely baggy and I don’t remember her head being especially oversized. A close cousin of the
Flashdance
sweatshirt was the Batwing jumper, which took the bagginess of the grey sweater and accentuated the effect under the arms to create a garment that looked like it might have the aerodynamic properties required for freefall gliding.

This new fashion of wearing sports clothing as casual clothing was partly inspired by the dance films and partly by the rather random eighties craze for aerobics. For some reason, the world went aerobics crazy in the mid-1980s with vast numbers of women (and men) buying Jane Fonda workout videos. In the UK we were treated to daily doses of the Green Goddess, who was clearly made of rubber, stretching and prancing about on BBC1’s
Breakfast Time
almost every day between 1983 and 1987.

If you were a child in the eighties there’s a pretty good chance you will remember the shameful sight of your mum standing in front of the telly, probably still in her nightie and without her make-up on, trying in vain to keep up with the Green Goddess as she danced effortlessly around the studio shouting words of encouragement to the viewers at home. You may also remember seeing women dressed in full aerobic outfits, often in neon colours, out walking the dog or doing the shopping. Olivia Newton-John didn’t help matters with her music video to
Let’s Get Physical
, which featured her dancing around in legwarmers, sweatbands and all the rest of it while doing aerobics with a bunch of sweaty, drooling men. But it wasn’t long before this bizarre fashion got out of hand and a new trend evolved in the form of nylon waterproof trousers and matching jacket – the shell suit. Originally designed as outdoor sportswear, people (who obviously were not doing any sports) started wearing them out everywhere they went.

Shell suits really hit it off in the mid-1980s and it was around that time that fluorescent materials were at the peak of their popularity. This meant that all manner of garish colours and fluorescent strips were thrown together and it didn’t even matter if they clashed; in fact, if they did clash that was all the better! It’s an odd fact to get your head around, but the most iconic figure to sport a shell suit in the eighties was probably Jimmy Savile, enjoying a spot in the limelight for a respectable amount of time due to the popularity of
Jim’ll Fix It
. It was very rare to spot Jim without his beloved shell suit and infamous gold chains. In fact, to his dying day he still loved the swishing sound of his nylon attire and the baggy freedom that it gave him.

Although various manufacturers created different shell suits, the principle of the design was always basically the same: the lightweight top featured a small, rounded collar with a full zip down the centre; arms were generally puffy and it was preferable to have a shell suit that was slightly too big than have the elasticated wrists riding halfway up the forearm. If you wanted to ride the sleeves up on purpose, though, that was OK. The arms might feature brightly coloured strips down the side of them, and it was also possible to find plenty of jackets with fluorescent arrow-like computer-generated designs down the front.

Of course, unless you wanted it to look like you were just wearing a nylon jacket then you simply had to have the matching bottoms to complete the image. Based on the design of a jogging pant, the loose trousers always featured an elasticated waistband with elastic around the ankles. Team this up with a pair of ultra-white socks and chunky white Reebok or Nike’s with the tongue out and you had the look! White sock fear just didn’t exist in those days; in fact, Michael Jackson had made it positively fashionable to show off your white socks so it was preferable to hitch your trousers up slightly and puff the bottom of the nylon out like an eighties’ Aladdin. The beauty of separates is that you can mix and match, so if you wanted to wear the top with jeans (stonewash only, please) or don the bottoms with a jumper, that was fine too.

Even though a shell suit-donned figure was more likely to be seen browsing the shelves of C&A or John Menzies than tearing around a hurdle track, the shell suit’s roots were firmly in the sportswear section. The elasticated waists and forgiving movement of the baggy bottoms were perfect for outdoor activities. Kris Akabusi for one loved them very much as he was able to lunge and run to his heart’s content without the fear of chafing.

At the same time that some people were dressed as Madonna and others were dressed as aerobics instructors, another group of people were dressed like characters from
Dallas
or
Dynasty
in a new fashion dubbed ‘power dressing’. Power dressing was characterised by women wearing shoulder pads in their dresses, showing off their ostentatious jewellery and styling their hair to make it as large as possible without it collapsing under its own weight.

My good friend Rebecca demonstrating a big hair and jumpsuit combo. Notice the casual confidence that comes from knowing how good you look.
(Rebecca Güreci)

The origins of power dressing are fairly clear and can, in large part, be attributed to the American soap opera
Dynasty
which was watched by over 250 million viewers. One of the main characters was played by actress Linda Evans, whose naturally broad shoulders gave the Dynasty costume designer, Nolan Miller, the idea of emphasising them with small shoulder pads. She then decided that every other actress had to be shoulder-padded with even bigger pads to match Linda and consequently the shoulder pad war began.

The shoulder pad became an iconic status symbol that represented both power and wealth, and the size of the shoulder pad seemed to correlate directly with the social status of the wearer. The bigger the shoulder pad, the more money you had, and the eighties was definitely a time for shouting about how much money you had (remember the Harry Enfield character ‘Loadsamoney’?). Dresses were available with Velcro shoulder pads that could be removed or replaced with different-sized pads. I wonder whether women carried a range of shoulder pads in their handbag for different social occasions.

I don’t want to overanalyse the whole power dressing thing, but there was a lot more to it than just copying the characters from
Dynasty
. The ‘equality for women’ movement actually had quite a lot to do with it, with women playing an increasingly important role in business but still feeling the need to power dress to gain the respect of their male colleagues. You only have to look at the 1980 film
Nine to Five
with Dolly Parton to get a taste of the sexism, bigotry and chauvinism that was still standard fare in many workplaces for much of the eighties.

I’m sure no one would like to think that Mrs Thatcher in any way inspired their fashion sense, but at that time, Mrs T was a leading example of a very ballsy woman power-dressing to gain respect in the almost entirely male world of politics. There is no doubt that her daily appearances on television dressed in power suits reinforced this particular trend. A more appealing ambassador for power dressing, perhaps, was the Princess of Wales, who had to overcome similar challenges as a member of the royal family, and I think we’d all prefer to think that we got our inspiration from Princess Di than from Mrs T.

Power dressing wasn’t such a big thing for men, except for uncool yuppies, although many men still had some padding in their shoulders. Instead, an alternative fashion emerged that was way cooler since it was inspired by the American TV series
Miami Vice
. Leading man Don Johnson teamed expensive Armani jackets with casual t-shirts and a few days’ beard growth to create a look that told the world you had plenty of money but were still cool with it. It didn’t take long before men everywhere were wearing pastel-coloured t-shirts under their expensive designer jackets (or in most cases, their cheap imitation designer jackets).

Of course, in the eighties, you didn’t just wear your (fake) designer jacket the way it was intended; you had to roll the sleeves up if you wanted to be truly cool. Any ideas why? Well, I have a theory about how this particular trend started and, after doing a bit of Googling, I didn’t come up with any better ideas so I’m taking this opportunity to formally announce ‘Johnson’s Theory of Rolled-Up Jacket Sleeves’. We’ve already established that the 1980s was a time when people liked to show off how much money they had, so an expensive designer jacket was the ideal choice of clothing to let everyone know you had plenty of dosh. But then all the people with no money started wearing cheap, fake designer jackets which meant that nobody could tell that your jacket was the real deal. Real designer jackets have actual working buttons on the sleeves that let you unbutton them and roll them up, whereas cheap, fake jackets just have stitched-on buttons that don’t actually do anything. If you don’t believe me, go and check your suit jacket now and there’s a very strong chance it will have fake buttons on the sleeves, unless it cost you more than £500 (and if it did cost you more than £500 and you have fake buttons, you’ll know you’ve been fleeced). So how do you show the world you have a real designer jacket? You simply unbutton the cuffs and roll up the sleeves of course! Now everyone knows you’ve got loads of money once more.

I can’t discuss eighties fashion without mentioning the New Romantic movement, which led to the famous, over-the-top make-up and clothing demonstrated by people like Adam Ant and Boy George. New Romanticism really had its roots in the 1970s punk fashion movement, of which Vivienne Westwood was perhaps the most notable proponent; but instead of taking its cues from the grim council estates and the miserable struggles against social deprivation, the New Romantics celebrated glamour and partying and all things theatrical. Basically, the New Romantics were the punks that just liked the dressing-up bit and weren’t so keen on all the anarchy.

The bold and streaky make-up was a clear throwback to punk, as were some of the outlandish frilled costumes worn by Adam and his Ants, but things had moved on and become altogether more glamorous. The pirate look designed by Vivienne Westwood for Adam and the Ants is probably the most iconic of the New Romantic outfits, with full-sleeved, frilled buccaneer shirts made from expensive fabrics, Victorian-era Hussar jackets with gold braiding and high-waisted, baggy trousers tapering at the ankle, finished off with a white stripe painted across the bridge of the nose.

I remember my brother being given a make-up set one Christmas and my mum helping him paint a white stripe across his face like Adam Ant so he could dance around the living room with his plastic guitar singing along to
Stand and Deliver
. As far as I remember, he didn’t ever go out with the make-up on. In fact, you didn’t see many people dressed in full pirate/dandy highwayman outfits out doing the shopping, but in the music scene and nightclubs there was no shortage of flamboyant costumes inspired by the likes of David Bowie, Duran Duran, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club.