1980s Fashions... Suitable Trends For Today?

1986 - posing overdrive for women...

 Looking around, I see many 1980s-influenced fashions around me. The leggings. The deelyboppers. The blonde hair streaks. The gelled or moussed look. '80s sportswear-influenced designs on outdoor coats and modern sportswear. Stone and acid washed jeans. The turned back/pushed up jacket sleeve look. I've even seen jelly shoes! And lots more... 

Clearly (although many hate to admit it) the '80s are now highly influential in the modern fashion world. Here's a few tips from a few UK mail order catalogues of the 1980s for those who want to get the look just right... 

Male posing for the 1980s... the trouble with the pushed up sleeve effect is that they keep coming down. The '80s look is very high maintenance indeed. Try walking with your arms close to your side, or buying a jacket with a nice contrasting inner lining so that you can solve the problem by turning back your sleeves instead of pushing them up.

Where Jane Fonda first flew in 1982 with her Workout video, others soon followed. Aerobics woz 'ere. In fact, as the '80s went on, sport and fitness became a positive mania, and sportswear became ever more colourful and expensive as we entered the era of designer sports fashions. Fit for business. Fit for life.

"It's my broker!" grins the geezer on the chunky phone, seeking to impress. Looks like a right yuppie, doesn't he? Love the suit. So very stylish... And by the mid-1980s, style was what it was all about. Well, the '80s idea of style, that  was.

 Some great mid-1980s winter warmth jackets. I had the one on the left!

 Lustre look sheen fabric... the '80s shiny suit... brill! I've still got one of mine, a grey one with over large shoulders, and recall sliding down the wall at Tracy's Nite Spot in it after quaffing back a bit too much of the Reassuringly Expensive Stella Artois, circa 1987. I'd been leaning against the wall nonchalantly, eyeing up the talent, glass in hand, when I felt my descent begin.  I managed not to spill a drop.

"Hello, is Giles there please? It's his broker calling."

"Giles, it's your broker!"

"Tell him I'm in the bog, would you purlease, mateyboots?"

Something for 1986 kids. I'm absolutely positive that the lad on the left is (then) future pop star Chesney Hawkes (remember that rascally early 1990s hit The One And Only? We do. But we wish we didn't).

Late 1980s - terrific designs for posey male sportswear, hugely influential on the 1990s, and still influencing today's sports fashions.

1989...

Making a splash in '89...

Black leggings, ending around the knee, swept into fashion around 1982. And were still up there in 1989.

More from 1989. That belt looks really industrial, doesn't it? What did it mean? Search me...

And a last blast from 1989... Hot off the beach... WOW!

But suppose you've seen all these delights, you've thought it all through, and you don't want to adopt ANY of these swingorilliant  '80s trends?

Well, suit yourself.

There's no accounting for taste...