New wave

Call it the cycle of life. Call it short-term memory loss or fashion amnesia. Whatever the term, one thing is clear: what goes around comes around. Every 20 or so years, the clock moves back and suddenly fashion looks like it’s in the middle of a time warp. Maybe it’s because the sins of the past don’t look as painful and embarrassing as they did before. And to a younger generation, the retro aesthetic looks fresh and new, something cool to coo about to like-aged peers.

For the kids of the ‘80s, with its peppy upbeat songs, big hair and neon lights, the sting of shame – from wearing shoulder pads, fringe or felt headbands – has faded into nostalgia. Suddenly, the errors that seemed so enormous just a decade ago have been lovingly labeled "fashion experiments." Just as Do or Don’ts lists come and go, the relevance of blue eyeshadow changes with the years. One day it’s gross and unseemly, something the colorblind music teacher would wear with makeup done to a craypas thickness, the next it’s the beauty industry’s newest thing. While teenagers cluck and gasp over the new brightly colored products being brandished over makeup counters, people old enough to remember Bangles, Tiffany, New Kids on the Block and Wham! simply roll their eyes and mutter about how things were so different back in the ‘80s, before MP3 players and DVDs, when finding someone else on the same phone line wasn’t invasion of privacy but simply a "party line."

A new TV show in the US called Reunion, which recently debuted on the same network as The Simpsons and The OC, has an interesting premise. Just like That ‘70s Show, only a decade later, the series revisits a group of friends during their heyday, post high school grad in the early ‘80s. And throughout the show, cute little references like "That is so St. Elmo’s Fire" are tossed around like little time capsule nibblers. And when one of the characters argues the merits of Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go), it takes more than a little bit of self-control to not sing back to the TV, "Don’t leave me hanging on like a yo-yo." But that’s just me.

The thing about growing up in the ‘80s, when most of Madonna’s wardrobe consisted of tattered pieces of bridal lace, was there was a lot of optimism in the air. If Molly Ringwald could hook Andrew McCarthy, then anything was possible. You could mix polka dots with stripes, florals with plaid. Anything goes. Grab a T-shirt off the floor, add a belt and suddenly it’s a dress.

In this issue of YStyle, we revisit the best – or worst, you decide – of the ‘80s: spiky hair, leg warmers, mixed patterns. You name it; we probably stole it from our mom’s back closet and photographed it.

From the prom dress aesthetic of Marc Jacobs and Preen to the graffiti print-frocks of Donna Karan to the oversized Dior sweaters of John Galliano, the fashion scene seems to be having a renaissance of familiar pieces, many of which could have hung comfortably in between the tapered pants and abstract print T-shirts that dotted many a girl’s closet two decades past. Everyone, these days, seems to be inspired by the pop decade’s bright outlandish vibe, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who grew up listening to anthems like Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield or Irene Cara’s Fame.

There’s something a little bit screwy about a decade that celebrated socks with pumps, bermuda shorts in neon colors and – let’s not forget – shoulder pads. But that’s the charm of the ‘80s – as long as you were having a blast, nothing else mattered.