A really bad pair of leg warmers. - Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wi
Stirrups, leg warmers... come on, you know you miss them. Here are ten fashion trends from the 1980s that will have you reaching for your Wham! records.
The 1980s brought us awesome pop music, great teen movies, and some of the weirdest fashion trends ever to grace the shelves. Here's some of the most unforgettable (or perhaps forgettable) fashion trends from the eighties.
- Jordache jeans. What teenage girl didn't long for Jordache? There was something about those pockets with those wavy designs that were hard to resist. Sergio Valente and Calvin Kleins were designer jean contenders, but nothing said 1981 like a pair of Jordache.
- Big hair. In the 1970s, girls ironed their hair to make it straight. In the 1980s, the curly haired girls got their revenge and made big hair the rage! Here's how it works: you make huge curls with a curling iron, spray them generously with hair spray, and use a hair pick to make the curl as voluminous as possible. Then you add more hair spray, of course. Oh and let's not forget about hair mousse! Nobody knows what hair mousse was really supposed to do, but everyone used it back in 1984.
- Stirrups. Yeah, nowadays no one wears them other than ladies with very large rears in Atlantic City. But these stretchy pants with the strangely pointless foot flaps were cool. For one thing, they were super comfortable, and if you had the sense to wear them with an oversized shirt to conceal your belly flab, they were kind of cute.
- Fluorescent shirts. These were all the rage for about 5 minutes in 1983. If you blinked, you missed them, but that was okay because you reduced your risk of blindness.
- Flashdance shirts. What a feeling! This was a very simple concept. You take a sweatshirt and rip one sleeve downward at the neck, like Jennifer Beals did in 1983's Flashdance. Then you sell it at Rave for $16.99.
- Banana clips. These long, bizarre hair contraptions snapped together on the sides. The resulting hairdo was a cross between a ponytail and a mohawk. But at least it kept your big hair out of your face.
- Gigantic belts. The best ones were the gigantic black elastic kind that snapped in front. Paired with stirrups and a massive shirt, the belt was the essential accessory of junior high girls everywhere.
- Matching sweaters and socks. Socks ruled in 1985. Every oversized sweater simply had to be paired with big floppy socks in exactly the same color. True 1980s fashionistas paired black-speckled pastel colored sweaters with matching black-speckled pastel colored socks.
- High-top sneakers. Mall walkers everywhere donned these apparatuses in 1984. The new design didn't have much function, but they looked cute with the floppy socks and matching sweaters.
- Leg warmers. These hideous things just can't be left off the list, much as we'd all like to forget about them. There has never been a less functional item of clothing, unless you have a strange propensity to get cold calves.
Copyright Naomi Rockler-Gladen. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.
Naomi Rockler-Gladen - Instructional designer and freelance writer, Naomi Rockler-Gladen writes some of Suite101's most read work.
