80s Fashion Trivia
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58 free 80s Fashion trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
54 free 80s Fashion trivia questions with answers. The 1980s dressed louder than any decade before or since, and this quiz covers the whole wardrobe. Fifty-four questions run from power dressing and Dynasty shoulder pads to Madonna's lace gloves, Miami Vice pastels, Members Only jackets, Swatch watches, jelly shoes, leg warmers, acid-wash denim, the first Air Jordans and Reebok's aerobics shoe. The designers get their due too: Claude Montana, Norma Kamali, Karl Lagerfeld arriving at Chanel, Christian Lacroix's pouf, Donna Karan's seven easy pieces, Vivienne Westwood's Pirate collection, Azzedine Alaia, Katharine Hamnett's slogan tees and Dapper Dan's Harlem boutique. Easy questions ask which show made T-shirts under Armani jackets a thing; the hard ones want the ballet behind the mini-crini and the company that patented acid wash. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and brand histories, and each question carries the sentence that supports it, so you can settle arguments with confidence.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What two-word term describes the shoulder-padded look of 1980s career women?
Power dressing
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.
Q 02Joan Collins and Linda Evans helped make oversized shoulder pads a craze on which prime-time soap opera?
Dynasty
Dynasty: costume designer Nolan Miller's wide-shouldered outfits proved so popular that the ABC soap spawned its own womenswear line, The Dynasty Collection.
Q 03Which French designer was nicknamed 'the King of the Shoulder Pad'?
Claude Montana
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.
Q 04Norma Kamali's hit early-1980s collection turned which humble fabric into skirts, dresses and jumpsuits?
Sweatshirt fleece
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.
Q 05Besides lace tops and stacked bracelets, Madonna's 'Like a Virgin'-era imitators wore big jewelry in what shape?
Crucifixes
Crucifixes: stylist Maripol shaped the look, then sat beside Andy Warhol to judge a Madonna look-alike contest at Macy's in 1985.
Q 06Which word completes the title of Lisa Birnbach's tongue-in-cheek 1980 style bible, 'The Official ___ Handbook'?
Preppy
Preppy: the satire explained where preps school, summer and shop, and its success inspired the copycat Yuppie Handbook a few years later.
Q 07Which TV series is credited with popularizing the T-shirt-under-Armani-jacket look for men?
Miami Vice
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.
Q 08Michael Mann banned which colour family from the look of his pastel 1980s cop show?
Earth tones
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.
Q 09Which costume designer, married to the video's director, made the red jacket for the 1983 'Thriller' video?
Deborah Nadoolman Landis
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.
Q 10How much did the red jacket from the 'Thriller' video fetch at a 2011 auction?
$1.8 million
$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.
Q 11Richard Gere's wardrobe in which 1980 film helped make Giorgio Armani a household name?
American Gigolo
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.
Q 12The 1983 Swatch was the Swiss answer to cheap Asian watches built on which technology?
Quartz
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.
Q 13How did Members Only finish its slogan 'When you put it on, …'?
something happens
Q 21Which British design duo made Lady Diana Spencer's 1981 wedding dress?
David and Elizabeth Emanuel
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.
Q 22Diana's 1981 wedding dress trailed its train into which church?
St Paul's Cathedral
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.
Q 23Guess, the jeans brand launched in 1981, was built by four brothers with what surname?
Marciano
'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.
Q 14The Freestyle sneaker of 1982, the first athletic shoe designed for women, was built for which activity?
Aerobics
Aerobics: the soft-leather Freestyle rode the exercise-class boom, and within two years its maker's sales had multiplied several times over.
Q 15Which brand launched the Pump in 1989, a $170 sneaker that wearers inflated for a snug fit?
Reebok
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.
Q 16Magic Johnson and Larry Bird starred in 1980s ads for which brand's Weapon sneaker?
Converse
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.
Q 17Nike's 'banned' Air Jordan ad played on an NBA rule that shoes be mostly which colour?
White
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.
Q 18The 1988 Air Jordan III introduced which logo?
The Jumpman
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.
Q 19Tom Cruise's Ray-Ban Wayfarers helped revive the sunglasses in which 1983 film?
Risky Business
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.
Q 20Which 1980 comedy put its heroes in black suits, hats and Ray-Ban Wayfarers?
The Blues Brothers
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.
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.
Q 24In a controversial 1980 jeans ad, 15-year-old Brooke Shields asked what came between her and her ___?
Calvins
'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.
Q 25Before they became an 80s fashion item, leg warmers were worn by whom to stop muscles cramping?
Dancers
Dancers wore them in rehearsal to keep leg muscles warm and loose; Flashdance and the home-workout boom then put them on everyone else.
Q 26Whose 1982 workout video put leotards and leg warmers into living rooms?
Jane Fonda
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.
Q 27Jelly shoes, the translucent sandals of the mid-80s, are made from which material?
PVC plastic
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.
Q 28Stone-washed jeans get their faded, worn-in look from being tumbled with which rock?
Pumice
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.
Q 29Despite the name, acid-wash jeans are tumbled with stones soaked in what?
Chlorine
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.
Q 30Whose 1986 song 'My Adidas' led to a landmark endorsement deal between a rap act and a sportswear giant?
Run-DMC
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.