The Complete Guide to 80s Fashion

Swatch watches: Every kid who wasn’t a complete loser had a few of these inexpensive plastic watches made with bright colors and patterns. Owning several was not enough, you had to wear them all at once.

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Ray Ban: Famous for their Wayfarer and Aviator sunglasses, a huge pair of sunglasses were compulsory according to 80s fashion trends.

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Triple Fat Goose: Ski-outfits were popular with yuppies in 1980s fashion. Their puffy, down-filled leather jackets inspired designers like Ralph Lauren to also create parkas in other fabrics.

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Gotcha, Maui & Sons, and Lightning Bolt: These surf-wear designers promoted a carefree lifestyle, and because of their fun-loving reputation, the clothes became streetwear.

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Benetton: One of the first big brands to step up and create awareness of social issues, ‘United colors of Benetton’ was a hit when it advertised boldly colored, patterned outfits and high waisted designs in true 80s fashion.

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Boy George: As one of the leaders of punk culture and music, Boy George regarded 80s fashion as art. With a philosophy of ‘anything goes’, Boy George and his American contemporaries like the Misfits helped to make dressing up and wearing makeup something not only the girls do.

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MTV: MTV (a music television channel started in 1981) and wildly dressed celebrities of the 80’s was a match made in heaven. It suddenly became much easier to spread a fad and rock stars appearing on the channel had an enormous impact on teenage fashion all over America.

Princess Diana: Many 80s fashion statements started with Princess Diana, even though she professed herself entirely disinterested in fashion. Beloved by the world since she first publicly appeared with Prince Charles early in 1981, people noted and emulated her every move. Diana was the force behind iconic 80’s clothing as diverse as the padded shoulder and feminine patterned silk blouses, high waisted jeans, statement shoulder pads, the winged ‘Diana’ hairstyle, and pearl earrings. She also sparked bizarre 80’s trends such as wearing several watches at once.

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Jane Fonda: Jane Fonda was the first major actress to make an exercise video. Already making waves in the fashion world with her role in earlier movies such as Barbarella, Jane Fonda gained enduring fame for the leg warmers and leotards she introduced to the 80’s fashion scene through her fitness videos. Because of Jane, sports clothing walked from the gym on to the catwalk and soon became part of people’s everyday 80’s fashion wear.

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The 1983 movie Flashdance represented the essence of the 80s fashion. Oversized sweatshirts for women, leg warmers, leggings, and asymmetrical details originally made popular by the movie, are all coming into fashion again.

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The Calvin Klein underwear scene in the movie Back to the Future perfectly illustrates the power of brand name clothing in the 80’s and how celebrity collaborations helped to put a brand on the 80’s fashion list. To this day, Calvin Klein tighty whities with logoed waistband are the preferred symbol of sensual underwear for generation X.

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The power-suit: A sharply-tailored suit with wide padded shoulders like Jackie Collins’ was a major fashion trend and a must if you had an office job during the 80’s. With the skirt at the knee and the jacket cinched at the waist, the 80’s power-suit was made of glitzy fabrics in jewel colors and worn with a plain blouse by a designer such as Versace including heaps of costume jewelry.

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Lamé: From 80’s prom style to middle-aged moms at a party, every woman had a shiny lamé dress with ruffles and quite possibly off one shoulder. Lamé dresses were worn in dazzling colors, paired with high-heel pumps and lots of make-up and accessories.

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Leggings and stirrup-pants: Olivia Newton-John kicked off the craze with her skin-tight black leggings in the 1978 movie Grease, and by the early eighties, leggings started to replace fitted slacks for women. Try stirrup pants became popular, and towards the end of the eighties, women of all ages could be seen wearing leggings with a comfortable oversize sweater or large t-shirt.

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Jelly shoes: In 1983, a buyer from Bloomingdales in New York saw jelly shoes at a shoe convention in Chicago and ordered them for the store chain. Despite being made of plastic, the inexpensive shoes were incredibly comfortable to wear, and the jelly shoe craze took off to such an extent that even great 80’s fashion designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier added them to their range.

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T-shirts: In the early 80s, Katharine Hamnett helped causes to make their voice heard through political slogans printed on t-shirts and soon large companies such as Nike, Adidas and Guess realized the advertising potential of their logo printed on T’s. You could wear your 80’s style t-shirt with a logo or slogan, with printed letters, or in a plain bright or pastel color. The comfortable tee was a staple to wear with jeans or leggings.

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Legwarmers: It wasn’t only Jane Fonda and the stars of Flashdance wearing leg warmers in the 80’s; leg warmers were every woman’s fashion statement, and sports clothes, skinny jeans, and leggings and a big sweater were all outfits that required legwarmers as a finishing touch.

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Denim jackets: Denim jackets for women became popular in the 70’s, but the 80’s gave rise to the classic short-waisted denim jacket for women. Worn with tight jeans and paired with a t-shirt or ruffled blouse, the 80’s stone-washed denim jacket has become unbeatable as part of a classic American look.

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Logoed everything: 80’s fashion was largely about showing off affluence and style, and one of the best ways to do this was to wear clothing sporting the designer’s logo or advertising a brand. Everything from Disney to Harley Davidson and Coca-Cola was represented on clothing in the 80’s, and brands such as Nike, Gucci, Levi, Lacoste, and Tommy Hilfiger became household names.

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The Power-suit: Men wore sharply cut suits with wide shoulders in the 80’s. The idea was to look powerful and authoritative. Dark colors with a chalk stripe and jackets with a banker’s collar were the most common style. Men wore ties in the 80’s in a variety of styles; as with most 80’s men’s fashion, ‘anything goes’, and you could choose between extra-wide Kipper ties, skinny ties, and square-end ties. Ties were plain, patterned, or sometimes printed with weird designs that are making a comeback.

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Spray-painted and airbrushed tops: Graffiti artists such as Fab 5 Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat plied their trade on sweatshirts and T’s and the hip-hop culture of the 80s fashion together with Blondie’s music videos helped spray paint on clothing to become a favorite feature in 80s streetwear.

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T-shirts: A staple in men’s wardrobes since the 1960’s, t-shirts truly took off in the 80s. Whether you wore them plain, patterned or covered in slogans, every male wore t-shirts and the stars in movies, and music videos made muscle Ts famous too.

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Penny loafers without socks: In the 80s, it was customary for men to wear penny loafers and moccasins without socks.

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Harem pants: The forerunner of today’s dropped crotch pants, harem pants in psychedelic colors and dizzying patterns were a leftover from the 70s that carried forward its popularity in the 80s.

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Jams: Brightly colored and patterned knee-length shorts, often with Hawaii inspired prints. These were fashionable beachwear according to 80s fashion trends, but also doubled as casual streetwear.

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Socks for girls: While boys were getting away with wearing their sneakers without socks, layered socks and socks with lace edging were an 80’s fashion statement for the girls. Two pairs of neon socks worn one over the other, and ankle socks worn with heels were a bizarre 80’s fashion trend that seems set to return.

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Vans sneakers: Skateboarding was a favorite sport in the 80s, and masters of the board were showing off their skills indistinctive checkerboard Vans slip-on sneakers. Kids who wanted to emulate Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High rushed out to get their own pair and soon even adults were wearing them.

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Swatch watches: the name Swatch is a contraction of the words ‘second watch’, and that’s literally what these watches were in the 80’s. Inexpensive and made from plastic with bold patterns and bright color combinations, kids often owned more than one and wore them simultaneously. The fashion trend might have started after Swatch noticed princess Diana wearing more than one watch, and they promoted wearing multiple wristwatches by using tennis stars like Ivan Lendl and Andre Agassi as their brand ambassadors.

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Lace gloves and lacy clothing: In 1984, Madonna sang her hit song Like a virgin on MTV, decked out in a white dress and lace gloves. Lace gloves and anything lacy immediately became a fashion hit and remained throughout the 80’s.

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Neon everything: Blinding neon hues were a main feature of 80’s fashion, with one out of three Americans owning a piece of clothing in this garish and fluorescent color. Why was neon so popular? Neon was prevalent in the movies and on music stages because of its high visibility, and young people embraced the fashion trend and opted for bright yellow, green, pink and blue hues because the makers of fluorescent colors presented them as youthful and optimistic.

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High-cut swimsuits: Bikinis were popular too, but a classic 80s swimsuit would be a high-cut one-piece swimsuit like the babes on Baywatch wore.

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The focal point of an 80’s face was the eyes. Eyeshadow in peacock shades applied all the way to the eyebrows, followed by heavy eyeliner and lots of mascara. A smudgy look was popular, and often, more than one color eyeliner and mascara were applied for a layered look.

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Princess Diana’s side-wept shaggy hairdo was loved in the early eighties, but later in the decade, most women wore permed hair coiffed into elaborate styles kept in place with clouds of hairspray. Scrunchies replaced the traditional elastic band, and the new stretchy cloth accessory was often adorned with pearls, sequins, and velvet bows. If you wanted to tie your hair away, a banana clip was useful, and side ponytails regarded as funky and fun.

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African-American hairstyles were influenced by Jheri Redding, who wore his hair in loose permed ringlets. For a while, Michael Jackson copied this trademark style of 1980s fashion, and Jheri-curls became very popular. Another African-American hairstyle made all the rage by music was the high-top fade. From the moment Grace Jones was seen wearing it on her reggae album Warm Leatherette in 1980, black barbers were overwhelmed with requests for the style.

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The rattail has been called the ‘mullet lite’ of the 1980s fashion and was most popular among boys. Whether you wore your hair short, in a mullet, or permed it, a thin strand of hair at the back of your head was left uncut and hanged down naturally to make a rattail.

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Boomboxes: Music was the soul of the 80s, and the only way you could take it with you was a boom box. Walking around with a huge silver radio on your shoulder became an emblem of the 80s ‘in’ crowd.

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Fanny pack: Fanny packs became popular with tourists in the 80s, then crept into the fashion scene, and finally became a useful accessory for everyone from joggers and cyclists to parents who need their hands free to manage their kids. Although fanny packs are not as popular as in the 80s, they are still important enough for designers like Louis Vuitton to include them in their ranges.

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Headbands: Starting with the fitness movement, eventually everyone from joggers in the park to Karate Kid and rock stars like Bruce Springsteen and Olivia Newton-John wore headbands in the 80’s. The terry-cloth headband fashion trend saw the practical sports accessory transition to a fashion ornament in bright neon colors during the80’s, and everyone who was cool styled their hair around a headband.

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