80s Fashion for Girls

A recent trend in men's fashion is a resurgence of interest in the 1980's and the styles from that decade are being brought back in a retro-fashion for the so-called "80's Babies." 80's babies are people who lived through that decade as teenagers to young adults but now also include those that were born during that decade and wish they were old enough to remember it. The 80's fashion trends for men were driven by the success of Music became a main focal point of fashion.

Big hair was in and men wore their hair long and wild. Having a permanent done at a hair salon to achieve flowing curly locks was equally appealing to both men and women. If you couldn't make a lion's mane or a gigantic bush out of your hair, then you chopped it, dyed it, spiked it, and did everything you could to make your hair look like a UFO had just landed. The idea was to make your hair as big and as wild as possible.

This was the same for both guys and girls. Next to hair, the biggest fashion trend-setter was the dressing up in metallic fabrics for the dance scene. The women had an overabundance of and affection for gold lame' but the metallic fabrics also showed up in men's fashion in the form of silvery pants and gold shirts, that ranged from the horrid to the classically sexy. One of the favorites was any metallic material threaded with gold threads. It was all about sparkling under the dance lights.

Off the dance floor we poured ourselves into the tightest fitting jeans possible. The modern upgrade to this trend is to offer jeans that are made of slightly stretchable fabric so they achieve the same tight-fitting look without the discomfort or having to pull the zipper up with pliers to be able to put them on. The 80's were the last days of vinyl and all the music was bought and sold through record stores. Luckily the modern DJ's still have a taste for the old school stuff because it just is not as easy to scratch mix with a couple of Cd's, so for now the extended play DJ mixes and re-mixes on vinyl are still the dominant medium for musical playback in nightclubs. During the eighties, guys also wore spandex especially if they were in a heavy metal band or they wore tight black leather pants and jackets with chains and piercings to show how punk they were.

The 80's business attire was expressive with thin ties, pointed-toe dress shoes, strong contrast in colors, or the classic juxtaposition of black and white with the complimentary ray ban sunglasses to finish off the look. You could wear a shirt without a tie, complimented by five o'clock shadow, a la and be perfectly acceptable at the office. While current business attire has now gone more sedate, the same 80's business look has found its way back into the realm of the night-clubbers who dress up to go out for a night on the town and want to express themselves with abandon as a modern 80's baby.

It is very easy to recognize the fashion of the 1980s. This cannot be necessarily said of the fashion from the previous decades, because they share common elements that make them hard to distinguish from each other. It is safe to say that the 1980s fashion is in a completely distinct class of its own.

Even though one can still find boys that are wearing tube socks today, during the 1980s tube socks were the in thing to wear for girls and they wore it with almost any kind of outfit. However, just plain old tube socks were not enough during the 1980s. They had to be a ruffled to make the girls look really in step with fashion.

The girls also wore their hair in ponytails that sat on one side of the head.

Stonewashed jeans were the very big fashion item in the nineteen eighties. They had to be so skintight that you always wondered how people got into them in the first place. These jeans that were worn by men were accompanied by very colorful and decorative shirts or T-shirts.