Some fashion trends come back to haunt us decades later. 80s fashion will NEVER come back.
I am the last person on Earth that you would want to take fashion advice from. As my wife tells me every day, I just don’t give a shit; if you don’t like what I’m wearing, don’t fucking look at me. Nonetheless, I asked to do the fashion editorial for eighties week, so here we are.
I was not a world traveler in the 80s, so I am not sure what was supposed to be the in-thing in fashion meccas like London, New York and Milan. What I DO know is what was cool way up here, and it wasn’t pretty. Instead of researching this piece, I’ll be detailing eighties fashion as I experienced it. I wasn’t a business man or anything – I was a student. Therefore, if you’re looking for shoulder pads and pinstripe shoe info, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
 | In the eighties, a man’s worth was determined by the tightness of his pants. If you didn’t need grease and a hoist to put your jeans on, you were not cool. If that wasn’t bad enough, your jeans could be made extra-cool if you shredded the legs so that your knees were fully exposed. I remember a man who hung jeans up and pelted them with buckshot in order to create that original fucked-up homeless man jeans look. |
 | Shirts were a slightly different matter. I remember the “Vuarnet” phase, where you weren’t cool unless you had a Vuarnet shirt. Idiots in my school would not hesitate to check labels to ensure that you were wearing the genuine article (not a cheap knock-off). |
 | Remember Hypercolor shirts? Sure you do. Those are the ones that change color based on temperature. This means that a normally blue shirt would turn pink if you were sweating profusely. It’s like wearing a lie detector. This fad was relatively short-lived – I can’t recall seeing a Hypercolor shirt after 1990 or before 1987. |
Also popular in 80s shirtwear were music-related t-shirts, such as Twisted Sister, Poison or Kiss. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I still have a Forgotten Rebels shirt kicking around in my closet. Maybe I’ll wear it to work tomorrow.
 | The casual footwear craze of the early 90s had not taken hold yet, so it was running shoes or nothing. In the shoe department, you had two possibilities – Converse or Air Jordans. If you had neither, you might as well be wearing plastic grocery bags on your feet. The closest thing to casual footwear that I can recall were those stupid “Duckie” shoes – they’re like rubber boots, only they’re shoes! Unfortunately they were hideously ugly. I can’t fathom how something like can would become popular. |
The ultimate in terrible footwear were those damned jelly sandals. Most girls had ‘em, and the faggier guys were starting to wear them too. Happily, this tread died in 1990 along with uncountable other fashion atrocities.
 | Finally, something has to be said about hair styles. Mullets were oft-seen, as was the “rat tail.” I was a rat tail kid myself until my brother and I decided to get the Ultimate Warrior symbol shaved into the backs of our heads (don’t ask). Basically, long hair on men was the it-thing. If a person dared to show up at school with a shaved head, he was beaten up immediately for being a “skinhead”. Thankfully, few people in my school went all-out with Slash-style perms. That would have been unforgivably gay, 80s or not. |
 | The only thing worse than men's hair was women's hair. For some reason, the women of the 80s wanted to look as much like men as possible. Short, manly cuts like the one at left were common, as was the "I just got up 5 minutes ago" look that Cyndi Lauper was "famous" for. I swear if 80s hair styles ever come back, i'm moving to the Amazon. |
So that was 80s style in Sudbury Ontario. I’m sure that it was slightly different from fashion trends in your area, so this is your opportunity to detail your experiences. Those of you who were actually alive in the 80s – feel free to leave a comment about your favorite (or least-favorite) fashion trend.