58 Fun Facts About 80s Fashion

What two-word term describes the shoulder-padded look of 1980s career women?

Power dressing: the term took hold as women entered management in large numbers, with padded shoulders and tailored suits borrowed from menswear, and the wider the shoulder, the bigger the statement.

Joan Collins and Linda Evans helped make oversized shoulder pads a craze on which prime-time soap opera?

Dynasty: costume designer Nolan Miller's wide-shouldered outfits proved so popular that the ABC soap spawned its own womenswear line, The Dynasty Collection.

Which French designer was nicknamed 'the King of the Shoulder Pad'?

Claude Montana showed shoulders so wide that he declared 'Shoulders forever!' in 1985, then moved most of his designs to a natural shoulder by 1988.

Norma Kamali's hit early-1980s collection turned which humble fabric into skirts, dresses and jumpsuits?

Sweatshirt fleece: Kamali's 'Sweats' line made gym fabric fashionable, and its shoulder pads, removable thanks to Velcro, helped win the public over to big padding.

Besides lace tops and stacked bracelets, Madonna's 'Like a Virgin'-era imitators wore big jewelry in what shape?

Crucifixes: stylist Maripol shaped the look, then sat beside Andy Warhol to judge a Madonna look-alike contest at Macy's in 1985.

Which word completes the title of Lisa Birnbach's tongue-in-cheek 1980 style bible, 'The Official ___ Handbook'?

Preppy: the satire explained where preps school, summer and shop, and its success inspired the copycat Yuppie Handbook a few years later.

Which TV series is credited with popularizing the T-shirt-under-Armani-jacket look for men?

Miami Vice put Don Johnson's Crockett in pastel T-shirts under unstructured Italian jackets, and the look sold so well that Macy's opened a Miami Vice section in its young men's department.

Michael Mann banned which colour family from the look of his pastel 1980s cop show?

Earth tones were barred by Mann's 'no earth tones' edict, which kept the show to the flamingo pinks, lime greens and Caribbean blues of its Art Deco setting.

Which costume designer, married to the video's director, made the red jacket for the 1983 'Thriller' video?

Deborah Nadoolman Landis gave the slight singer a V of black stripes and jutting shoulders to make him look more virile, and said the V echoed the arrowhead shape of the choreography.

How much did the red jacket from the 'Thriller' video fetch at a 2011 auction?

$1.8 million was the winning bid from Texas gold trader Milton Verret, who said he would use the jacket to raise money for children's hospitals.

Richard Gere's wardrobe in which 1980 film helped make Giorgio Armani a household name?

American Gigolo was announced as a John Travolta film; Richard Gere stepped into the role, and into the Armani suits, only after Travolta dropped out.

The 1983 Swatch was the Swiss answer to cheap Asian watches built on which technology?

Quartz let Asian makers flood the market with cheap watches while Swiss firms clung to mechanical movements; the colourful plastic Swatch, sold as a fashion item, led the Swiss fightback.

How did Members Only finish its slogan 'When you put it on, …'?

'Something happens' ran the tagline; by 1986 the jackets sold so well that the brand gave its whole advertising budget to anti-drug public service messages instead.

The Freestyle sneaker of 1982, the first athletic shoe designed for women, was built for which activity?

Aerobics: the soft-leather Freestyle rode the exercise-class boom, and within two years its maker's sales had multiplied several times over.

Which brand launched the Pump in 1989, a $170 sneaker that wearers inflated for a snug fit?

Reebok's Pump got its biggest advert when Dee Brown bent down to inflate his pair on live TV before winning the 1991 NBA dunk contest.

Magic Johnson and Larry Bird starred in 1980s ads for which brand's Weapon sneaker?

Converse filmed the two rivals as enemies on a court in Bird's Indiana hometown, and the shoot is where they began to become friends.

Nike's 'banned' Air Jordan ad played on an NBA rule that shoes be mostly which colour?

White: league policy wanted shoes 51% white and matching teammates', so the black-and-red pair drew a reported $5,000-a-game fine, which Nike gladly paid and turned into an advert.

The 1988 Air Jordan III introduced which logo?

The Jumpman silhouette debuted on the Air Jordan III, Tinker Hatfield's first design for the line, which is credited with keeping Jordan from leaving Nike.

Tom Cruise's Ray-Ban Wayfarers helped revive the sunglasses in which 1983 film?

Risky Business was the best-known placement in a $50,000-a-year deal Ray-Ban signed in 1982 to get its sunglasses on screen; Wayfarer sales leapt from 18,000 pairs to 360,000.

Which 1980 comedy put its heroes in black suits, hats and Ray-Ban Wayfarers?

The Blues Brothers modelled the look on bluesman John Lee Hooker, Dan Aykroyd says, and Hooker turns up in the film singing on a Chicago street.

Which British design duo made Lady Diana Spencer's 1981 wedding dress?

David and Elizabeth Emanuel kept the design in a studio safe and prepared a backup gown in case the secret leaked before the wedding day.

Diana's 1981 wedding dress trailed its train into which church?

St Paul's Cathedral: the 25-foot taffeta train had to be folded into the Glass Coach for the ride there, and it emerged visibly wrinkled as Diana climbed the steps.

Guess, the jeans brand launched in 1981, was built by four brothers with what surname?

Marciano: Georges, Maurice, Armand and Paul were born in Morocco and raised in Marseille, and Paul's grainy outdoor ads made stars of 'Guess Girls' such as Claudia Schiffer.

In a controversial 1980 jeans ad, 15-year-old Brooke Shields asked what came between her and her ___?

'Nothing' came between her and her Calvins, the line that made Calvin Klein's designer jeans a sensation and drew complaints that led some stations to pull the spots.

Before they became an 80s fashion item, leg warmers were worn by whom to stop muscles cramping?

Dancers wore them in rehearsal to keep leg muscles warm and loose; Flashdance and the home-workout boom then put them on everyone else.

Whose 1982 workout video put leotards and leg warmers into living rooms?

Jane Fonda made the tape to fund the Campaign for Economic Democracy, the political group she ran with her then-husband Tom Hayden, and its tights and leg warmers became gym fashion.

Jelly shoes, the translucent sandals of the mid-80s, are made from which material?

PVC plastic: the soft, translucent vinyl could be moulded in any colour and often glittered; a 1983 Bloomingdale's order is credited with starting the US craze.

Stone-washed jeans get their faded, worn-in look from being tumbled with which rock?

Pumice acts like sandpaper as it tumbles with the denim, scuffing away dye; the stones were so rough on waistbands and buttons that makers later turned to enzymes for the same faded look.

Despite the name, acid-wash jeans are tumbled with stones soaked in what?

Chlorine bleach soaked into the stones does the work: the look was found by accident when jeans and bleach-wetted stones were tumbled in a machine without water.

Whose 1986 song 'My Adidas' led to a landmark endorsement deal between a rap act and a sportswear giant?

Run-DMC told a Madison Square Garden crowd to hold their Adidas in the air in July 1986 while an executive from the company watched, and the deal followed.

Christian Lacroix, who opened his couture house in 1987, made his name with which balloon-shaped skirt?

Le pouf, a short puffball skirt, made headlines for Lacroix, yet his acclaimed couture house never turned a profit and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009.

Which fashion house did Karl Lagerfeld take over in 1983, revamping its ready-to-wear?

Chanel had been without its founder since Coco Chanel died in 1971; Lagerfeld revived the house and ran it for 36 years, while also designing for Fendi.

Donna Karan's 1985 debut collection of 'seven easy pieces' was built around which garment?

The bodysuit was the base layer: Karan sent out models in bodysuits and black tights, then built skirts, jackets and trousers over them, popularising the mix-and-match capsule wardrobe.

Benetton hired which photographer as creative director in 1982, leading to its "United Colors" campaigns?

Oliviero Toscani shot Benetton's first multiracial ad in 1984, then filled its billboards with social issues instead of clothes, including an AIDS activist's deathbed scene.

What was the name of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's first catwalk collection, which helped launch the New Romantics in 1981?

Pirate plundered 18th-century shirts and hats, and the swashbuckling look was taken up by Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow.

Which actress wore bright orange high-top sneakers under her black gown at the 1985 Emmy Awards?

Cybill Shepherd paired orange Freestyle high-tops with a strapless black gown, a red-carpet moment that sealed the gym shoe's status as a fashion item.

Tunisian-born Azzedine Alaïa's skin-tight 1980s designs earned him what nickname from the press?

The King of Cling: the press coined it for his body-hugging knits and leather; Grace Jones wore several of his creations in the Bond film A View to a Kill.

Rommy Revson patented the scrunchie in 1987 and named it 'Scunci' after what?

Her toy poodle, Scunci, lent the name; the idea came from an elastic waistband, and 'Scunci' later picked up its 'r' because the fabric scrunches up.

Which slogan T-shirt did Katharine Hamnett wear to meet Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street in 1984?

'58% DON'T WANT PERSHING' cited a European poll on US nuclear missiles; Hamnett hid it under her jacket at a 1984 Downing Street reception, then opened up as she shook Thatcher's hand.

Which slogan was on George Michael's Katharine Hamnett T-shirt in the "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" video?

CHOOSE LIFE came from a Buddhist exhibition Hamnett had seen; she meant it as a stand against war and destruction and has objected to its use by anti-abortion campaigners.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 1984 T-shirt craze put 'FRANKIE SAY' in front of which word, the title of their first hit?

RELAX: ZTT's Paul Morley devised the shirts as a riff on Katharine Hamnett's block-capital slogan tees, alongside rarer versions such as 'FRANKIE SAY ARM THE UNEMPLOYED'.

Parachute pants, a hip-hop craze of the early 80s, were made of which fabric?

Nylon: the shiny ripstop fabric, like a parachute's, gave the slim early-80s trousers their name and let b-boys spin on the floor without friction burns.

Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli made Vans checkerboard slip-ons famous in which 1982 film?

Fast Times at Ridgemont High put Spicoli in the slip-ons; Vans had adopted the checkerboard after noticing skateboarders drawing the pattern on the rubber sidewalls of their shoes.

Model Nick Kamen stripped to his boxers in a launderette in a famous 1985 TV ad for which jeans brand?

Levi's 501s were the jeans in the wash; the ad's song, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, sent Marvin Gaye's reissued original back into the UK top ten.

Which British hat brand, founded in 1938, became a hip-hop staple on LL Cool J and Slick Rick?

Kangol is British, yet it adopted a kangaroo logo in 1983 because Americans kept asking shops for 'the kangaroo hat'.

On which Harlem thoroughfare did Dapper Dan open his bootleg-logo boutique in 1982?

125th Street, Harlem's main drag, housed the boutique for a decade; it was sometimes open 24 hours a day and was shut down in 1992 after legal action by Fendi.

What did Dapper Dan call his logo-covered creations?

'Knock-ups', he insisted, were too extravagant to be mere knock-offs; decades later Gucci partnered with him officially, opening a Dapper Dan atelier in Harlem in 2018.

Cross Colours, launched in 1989, printed which slogan on every garment?

'Clothing Without Prejudice' went on every piece, and founders Carl Jones and TJ Walker added messages such as 'Stop D Violence' and 'Educate 2 Elevate' to clothes aimed at Black youth.

The word 'mullet' for the short-front, long-back haircut was popularized by which group's 1994 song?

Beastie Boys are credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with popularising the word through their 1994 track 'Mullet Head', so the haircut went through its 1980s peak without its famous name.

Why did Jennifer Beals say she cut the neck out of her Flashdance sweatshirt?

It had shrunk in the dryer, Beals said, so she cut the neck to get her head through, then wore it to an audition; the accidental off-the-shoulder look ended up on the film's poster.

Which American brand sold Lacoste's crocodile polo shirts under licence in the US until 1993?

Izod sold the shirts as 'Izod Lacoste' for four decades, so many Americans wrongly took the crocodile for Izod's own logo until Lacoste took back its US rights.

Nike's 1987 TV ad for its Air shoes controversially used which Beatles song?

'Revolution' was the first Beatles recording licensed for a TV commercial; the surviving Beatles sued, and Nike stopped airing the ad in March 1988.

Which pop star signed with LA Gear to front a line of black, buckled sneakers?

Michael Jackson's shoes were meant to launch alongside a greatest-hits album, but he fell behind on the music and the buckled sneakers reached stores without it.

Which brand's late-1980s TV ads had a driver ask a hitchhiker about his jeans?

Bugle Boy's line, 'Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you're wearing?', made it a household name; the firm began in 1977 as Buckaroo International and went bankrupt in 2001.

The designer-jeans brand Jordache takes its name from a contraction of what?

The first names of the three Nakash brothers, Joe, Ralph and Avi, were loosely blended into Jordache; Joe had come to New York from Israel in 1962 and found shop work before the others joined him.

What happened to the Jordache blimp on its maiden flight?

It crashed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, the site of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, during its first flight; the company's TV ads with a topless rider fared far better.

Which Japanese company launched the no-frills F-91W digital watch at the end of the 1980s?

Casio built the F-91W cheap and plain, with a battery that lasts some seven years; three decades on it was still being made in its original form.

The 1980s clothing brand known by its 'OP' logo was rooted in which sport?

Surfing: Ocean Pacific was a surfboard label before Jim Jenks turned it into a clothing line in 1972, aiming to dress surfers both in and out of the water.