’80s fashion trends that make us look back and wonder, “What were we thinking?”
Every decade thinks it’s getting it right. The 1980s thought it was getting it especially right, with the confidence of a culture that had just discovered power dressing, neon everything and the philosophical conviction that bigger was always better. It was not always getting it right. Some of what the decade produced was genuinely creative and bold. Some of it was the mullet.
Shoulder pads
Not just for football players anymore. Shoulder pads became the defining silhouette of 1980s power dressing, built into blazers, dresses and anything else a woman might wear to a boardroom or a Dynasty-watching party. The original idea had feminist roots (a physically assertive posture in response to chauvinistic workplace culture) but somewhere between Elsa Schiaparelli’s 1931 runway and Margaret Thatcher’s power suits, the concept escaped. By 1985, Mental Floss notes they were as ubiquitous as neon colors and Ray-Bans. They disappeared with the decade. They keep threatening to come back.
Acid wash jeans
Guess released the first pre-washed bleach-splattered jeans and the decade responded by demanding more, bigger, more aggressively discolored. Mental Floss documents that the acid-washing process has roots in 1960s surf culture, which makes the 1980s version feel less like an innovation and more like a telephone game that got out of hand. You didn’t just acid wash your jeans. You acid washed your jacket to match. The DIY era of denim destruction was a real thing that real people did voluntarily.
The mullet
Business in the front, party in the back. Nobody actually called it a mullet in the 1980s and Mental Floss confirms the term wasn’t widely used until the Beastie Boys released “Mullet Head” in 1994, four years after the style had peaked. In the 1980s, it was simply how some men wore their hair, with no name attached and apparently no warning system in place.
Neon everything
The decade adopted neon the way previous generations had adopted earth tones: completely and without reservations. On workout wear, accessories, socks worn over leggings, earrings large enough to constitute a physical hazard. The aerobics boom gave the color palette a practical justification and then the logic escaped the gym and colonized everything else.
Parachute pants
MC Hammer insisted they be called Hammer pants. Mental Floss traces the billowy, drooping, tapering trouser back to a mid-19th century feminist movement and Swiss sanitariums. By the late 1980s they had become the official pants of hip-hop. The synthetic material rustled when you walked. The crotch sat somewhere around the knees. You could not run in them.
Big hair
The higher the hair, the closer to God. In 1985, scientists reported that atmospheric ozone over Antarctica had been reduced by approximately 40 percent, and Mental Floss notes that hairspray was among the factors they cited. The decade’s relationship with aerosol products was, to put it generously, uncomplicated.
The bottom line
The 1980s dressed with the conviction that more was always more. Some of what it produced is back in fashion. Some of it is in storage. The mullet, improbably, is in both simultaneously.
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