The 80s, myth and reality?

[AbbaDatDeHat]

One thing:

Matching floral textured summer shirts and pants, was it a thing of the 80s or more 70s?

What’s floral textured mean?
If you mean floral patterned shirts, Magnum P.I. came out in 1980-88 and floral shirts were a trademark of his. Extremely popular show and i believe there was i big surge in their popularity, at least in the US.
In the 80’s i was still busy matching Levi blue jeans to everything.
Same as the 70’s.
B

 

[Trenchfriend]

What’s floral textured mean?

What I grabbed today. Matchy match...

 

[Tiki Tom]

A lot of the TV shows from the 80s and 90s have not aged very well.

 

[Fifty150]

What I grabbed today. Matchy match...

 

[Fifty150]

They also make these with an 80's fabric print.

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[Trenchfriend]

Working Girl (1988), right now running on arte.

Yes, I think, the hair is showing really 1988, haha!

 

[Fifty150]

Working Girl (1988), right now running on arte.

Yes, I think, the hair is showing really 1988, haha!

That movie was a trend setter. So many girls took their fashion cues from that film. I dated the girls with the big hair, the shoulder pads, the gym socks & aerobics shoes with their business clothes, and other fashion seen on screen. Look at the monitor. What computer did they have in '88? You had to be trained to operate that thing.

One of my 80's film picks:

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Fifty150

I had similar thoughts, when the movie started.

I thought, that this movie was probably a little "over the top" with the cliche and afterwards, some folks maybe copied the style.

But sorry, Harrsion Ford irritated me much in this role. Somehow, I got too much Rick Deckard in my mind...

 

[Edward]

One thing:

Matching floral textured summer shirts and pants, was it a thing of the 80s or more 70s?

My recollection of the north of Ireland and Britain in the 80s was floral stuff for men being roundly mocked as effeminate and/or - in those less enlightened times - "gay". There were still people who wore things reminiscent of 60s and 70s fashion trends (just as I have contemporaries who don't dress much different now than they did in the 90s when we were at university), though they were normally our parents' generation. I remember one scout leader who still wore flares - full on bell bottoms, not at all subtle - in 1989, and was mocked for it. Most viciously by his own son, who was mortified by them. Probably having grown up in the era of drainpipes as mainstream and my own punk rock loyalties kept me away from flares ("we don't care about long hair / I don't wear flares!" Seventeen , Jones, Lydon, Matlock, Cook). Even these days with my fat, bald, middle-aged self wearing some really rather wide trousers (that's long-haired, skinny, teenage me you see running away crying), I still wouldn't even consider flares. Wider, yes, but straight cut or pegged is an absolute demand. Anything too floral was denounced as "hippy" in my experience back then - something to be laughed at. Magnum wasn't seen as uncool per se - there was an exception made, it seems, for Haiwaiian shirts. I'm' not honestly sure whether that's cause they were cool (Magnum not withstanding; I seem to recollect we liked the show, though there was something funny about an adult wearing shorts outside of sport or the beach).

Back then, I think fashion also varied a lot more depending where you were in the world. A lot of Hollywood movie wardrobe looked very 80s to us in Ireland well into the 80s, though I think the 70s were even more different: if you look at an American retro idea of the 70s and a UK & Ireland idea of the 70s, it'll be very, very different.

In terms of the matching thing.... It's not something I ever remember seeing on a man or a male child much older than a toddler back in those days.

A lot of the TV shows from the 80s and 90s have not aged very well.

The eighties more so, I think. Early season of Star Trek The Next Generation in particular look dated in a way nothing before or since does (though to be fair being the age I am, the original Trek series always had a 'retro-futurist cool' that nothing contemporary could have gained in the same way. Maybe TNG is like that for kids born in the 90s and 00s who look back on the 80s the way I do the 50s... ). TNG still holds up from a story-telling pov, though. I'm sure there are some that have fared worse in that sense. It's certainly interesting when you look back on who gets to be the villains in action movies of any period and how that reflected the contemporary world of their day. And when a film becomes a classic, how that can sometimes require careful editing where the world has changed. Sometimes even films that reflect the changing world of the time can be a fascinating insight into how popular culture viewed its own era: see, e.g. Red Heat, possibly the first film I can remember seeing that portrayed a Soviet character as a hero without any expectation he would defect or denounce his homeland by the end. This in 1988, before anyone saw the fall of the Iron Curtain or the significant events in Europe that spread from the Summer of 89.

They also make these with an 80's fabric print.

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A friend who is a cutter on the Row made himself what he called "the Rompiro" some years ago, though his was towelling, intended as post-outdoor pool dip wear, 30s Resort Wear style. I'm sure I remember seeing something like this romper type of idea that was sold a traditional Haiwaiian wear - basically an eloha shirt with matching shorts built in - but I can't find any evidence of the same online now.

Again, I suspect in terms of this sort of thing in the 80s, it very much depends where you were. In the part of Ireland I grew up in, you generally didn't see adult men wearing shorts at all; I don't recall, outside of the beach, ever seeing my own father in a pair of shorts in my lifetime (though I know in his early 70s he did have a pair he wore on evenings in the South of Spain on holiday). It was very much still a culture where shorts were for little boys, and men wore trousers; I'm sure that was absorbed deep in my subconscious and (allied to my deep disinterest in sport) is part of why I wouldn't be seen dead in a pair of shorts today.

That movie was a trend setter. So many girls took their fashion cues from that film. I dated the girls with the big hair, the shoulder pads, the gym socks & aerobics shoes with their business clothes, and other fashion seen on screen. Look at the monitor. What computer did they have in '88? You had to be trained to operate that thing.

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I remember hearing a lot of media buzz about that. Even when you heard ordinary people talk about the film, the big thing they mentioned was always the trainers for the commute, switching to heels in the office. It's something that had become very common by the time I entered full time employment at the end of the 90s. By c.2019, I'd say it was dying out, certainly here in London, as the expectation that women would always wear heels in the office began to fade away, and it became less common to see women in office wear but with trainers on the tube. What was often seen by then,. though, was men doing it. Always had the air of "I won't wear boring old leather shoes when The Man can't make me!".... certainly, if they'd spent on a pair of shoes for the office what they had clearly spent on fancy gutties, any (imagined) comfort issues would have been even less credible. Even this phenomenon has now abated, though: a mix of the availability of fancy, leather trainers designed to look a bit more like a proper shoe, and the death of the traditional office dress code. Even before Covid, a lot of London offices were increasingly casualised. The City / Finance industry had largely been abandoning casual Friday (which had proven unpopular in the 00s/ early 10s, as typically 'business casual' had for most men necessitated a third wardrobe, different to what they wore at home or Monday to Thursday) and going back to the old ways, but in 2016 the big fashion trend was for all the big law firms to go casual, down to the level of them wearing jeans. That's still around: at a practitioner conference at which I appear on a panel every year I've seen it in action. Last year, out of about a hundred people on the room, I was one of only two wearing a tie (the other was another speaker; the chair - a partner in a big name law firm - turned up in jeans and a fleece). The rise of WFH culture (which could have been a thing - and for some of us was, already - by the 00s) in the wake of Covid forcing adoption and proving the viability of the model, casualisation of working dress codes has accelerated. Now if you see somebody in trainers on the tube at eight in the morning, they're likely in jeans as well, and won't be changing in the office.

I suspect the wheel of fashion will change at some point, and some work environments will swing back to something more formal. I have mixed feelings on it myself. I've always appreciated the absence of a dress code at the university because it allows me to wear what I want - which happens to be collar, tie, tweeds, suits... If my colleagues want to go more relaxed, good for them. If the sort of classic tailoring that was a norm back in the 80s is to make a big comeback in office of the future, though, I suspect it will be first and foremost a fashion-led thing. It's going to be interesting to find out. Street fashion certainly is long overdue a sea-change of some sort: best as I can make out here in London, it's been dominated by the same jeans/t-shirt thing that was a norm when I was a student. If you laid out photos of students across the last four decades across at least parts of which I have taught, I'm not sure how accurately I cold date them even to a decade now.

 

[Fifty150]

trainers for the commute, switching to heels in the office. It's something that had become very common by the time I entered full time employment at the end of the 90s

By the 90's, there were shoes on the market which were allegedly built for comfort. I have no idea if those Easy Spirit heels were comfortable. I had a pair of Rockport.

 

[Trenchfriend]

But I still got one question:

Why he have to be told, where the cool water is??

 

[Trenchfriend]

How much 80s cocktail party cliche?

200%?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Media here is celebrating Beat Street (1984).

Never saw it and it's not my cup of tea, but it surely had a real impact in BRD and DDR.

 

[Turnip]

Been a BRD-kid in the 80s , though never heard about that.
The musical world at this end has been metal and rock such as Helloween, Accept, Raven, Motörhead, Slayer,…or Punk, such as Slime, Exploited, PATTTB, UK Subs…

 

[Trenchfriend]

Been a BRD-kid in the 80s , though never heard about that.
The musical world at this end has been metal and rock such as Helloween, Accept, Raven, Motörhead, Slayer,…or Punk, such as Slime, Exploited, PATTTB, UK Subs…

The impact in DDR was surely bigger, for natural reasons.

 

[Fifty150]

Beat Street depicted children partying in nightclubs.

Which in The 80's, was the case, in Chinatown. Yes, there were laws related to alcohol beverage service, cabaret activity, live music, etc. But nobody enforced them. Teenagers were dancing in the nightclubs, and drinking in the bars.


Beat Street sort of let everyone in Kansas know that Disco was dead, and dance music was no longer Disco.

 

[Fifty150]

 

[Fifty150]

This film was a little more "underground".

 

[Turnip]

The impact in DDR was surely bigger, for natural reasons.

On the other hand we much enjoyed „Der Schwarze Kanal“ , nobody could speak that rather disgustedly like Karl Eduard von Schnitzler. That’s always been a show not to be missed.
And those military, paramilitary and party organization parades on May first or DDR anniversaries, SED party congress reporting of course, so much in DDR-TV to discover.

 

[Fifty150]

The 80's gave us a wide selection of music.

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