A few days ago an article on the New York Times focused on the return of specific 80s trends.
The journalist who wrote the piece also quoted the late Amy M. Spindler, a fashion critic I used to like, who, a while back, claimed about recent fashion trends that are quickly recycled: “Anyone who has been in the fashion business for longer than five years, might be feeling like a drowning man whose life is flashing before his eyes.”
I cannot deny I felt a little bit like Spindler’s “drowning man” recently, seeing so many references to the 80s in fashion collections.
Yet what unnerved me the most wasn’t the fact that most fashion designers blatantly copied this decade, but that they just got stuck in the most evident references rather than researching a bit into fashion archives and history.
I was a young girl in the 80s and I fondly remember the early years of the decade not only as a fashionable time for oversized jackets and embarrassing hairdos, but also as a time for research.
The Italian ready-to-wear industry at the time was very strong and designers such as Versace and Ferré combined innovative researches into fabrics with their own passion for travelling to faraway lands. Some of the most interesting experiments carried out in the 80s were actually done in the knitwear field. There was a lot of competition between designers at the time, but in a way it was healthy and it was about coming up with the most innovative idea rather than producing the umpteenth perfume or make-up range.
Another interesting thing was that specific trends imported from other countries were filtered through local trends: New Romantics references for example mixed with 40s trends such as skirt suits, veiled hats and gloves in Italy.
The first image in this post was taken by Gianpaolo Barbieri in 1982 and gives you an idea of the New Romantic-meets-vintage-meets-the East trend: the model is wearing a rather exuberant design (almost Schiaparelli-like...) completed by a veiled fez courtesy of – believe it or not – Prada.
Another example of this trend (minus the reference to the Orient) was the look favoured by singer Antonella Ruggiero, the voice of Italian band Matia Bazar.
In the early 80s – when Italian artists were definitely more provoking both in their lyrics and in their looks – Matia Bazar launched synthpop tracks such as "Elettrochoc" and "Vacanze Romane" (Roman Holidays). Both the tracks were sung by Ruggiero in her opera trained voice that pleasantly contrasted with the electronic base, in the same way her 40s look - creamy skirt suits, one shoulder waist-flattering flared peplum dresses, gloves and pink curl hairstyles - contrasted with the music. In 1984 Ruggiero often sang in dresses by Cinzia Ruggeri that gave her a postmodernist allure.
Fiorucci’s affordable and exuberant clothes and accessories in bright and bold colours - from bags made of carved plastic (only good for a beach towel since anything smaller than that would fall out...) to soft plastic shoes (that would seriously maim your feet...) were rather popular, but while there was no huge crisis in my home country as there is now, if you couldn’t afford designer outfits you wouldn’t sit and cry. You would indeed buy designer fabrics from specialised shops and made your own designer dress or you would dig into your family "archive" (read wardrobe) with a will to experiment that equalled Anna Piaggi’s (on acid, but who cared...).
Experimenting was a way to react to the darkest historical periods lived in the 70s, such as the wave of terrorism in Italy that had also generated a sort of paramilitary trend in previous years.
You wonder why in a society that is constantly bombarded by different stimuli and fashion houses have huge archives at their disposal, designers had to stop at leggings, neon colours and sequins to produce something new and original.
The current 80s revival seems to have generated only crossovers between characters out of Kaoru Tada’s anime Ai shite Knight, Dallas/Dynasty or Jem and the Holograms. One of the favourite past-times of girls who liked Jem and the Olograms was actually making dresses that had appeared in the TV show but had never been produced by the Hasbro toy company that made the Jem doll. This seems to have turned also into the favourite past-time of many designers out there.
I have fond memories of specific years, trends and designers from the 80s, but, if I had to tell you the truth, there is only one thing I would like to live again from that period of time and that's the power fashion had to genuinely excite people and the way going out for an afternoon stroll, a film or a meeting with friends often meant spending some time in front of the mirror to try and find a way to look different from everybody else and not to copy whatever anybody else was wearing.
Try to follow this simple rule if you really want to go for 80s trends and you will avoid to tragically transform yourself into the umpteenth sequinned photocopy of many fashion victims out there.
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