1980s Fashion by Caryn Franklin

1. Style magazines

There was never any talk of celebrity or success, only credibility and who had it. The style magazines i-D, The Face and Blitz were a triumvirate of street and music fanzines aimed at those with aspirations, attitudes and pretensions to creative grandeur. i-D is still headed by Terry Jones, who gave me my very first job. He put Madonna on the cover before anyone knew who she was.

2. Clubland culture

Getting dressed for and getting into clubs in the 1980s was a strategic career move — self-styled hosts such as Steve Strange decided whether ‘the look’ entitled its owner to entry. In PDT (Pre-Digital Times), Blitz, Hell, Cha Cha’s, The Wag and Taboo were like Facebook, but for proper social networking. The dancefloor was the catwalk and some saw any conversation as an informal job interview.

3. Buffalo

It’s an attitude, a look and a posture that even today lends David Beckham some of his best poses. It was named and defined by the late, great menswear stylist Ray Petri, who dressed a coterie of sleek and sultry, mostly mixed-race men in sensual streetwear designed to thrill both sexes. The Kamen brothers, Nick and Barry, did — and still do — it best.

4. Filofax

The diary, once a private, slimline booklet, super-sized into the Filofax. These obese leather-bound portfolios demonstrated how busy and successful their owners were. The power brunch, the working lunch, gallery openings, to-do lists and therapy appointments proved that executive stress had been democratised... over-achieving was a lifestyle pursuit.

5. Visual excess

Shoulder pads reached the overblown proportions that helped Joan Collins look like an American footballer; diamanté ear-chandeliers rivalled Regent Street’s Christmas lights; and bouffants and gelled quiffs were de rigueur for guys. Maximalism and power-dressing came from the catwalk as exaggerated futuristic silhouettes but, in the hands of the untrained, quickly became comical. Street style, on the other hand, allowed for individual experimentation. I wore a shaved head, 14-hole DMs and shoe jewellery one day and swimwear, tailoring and a towelled turban the next... and that was just my office look.

6. White Rasta

In an appreciation (or appropriation) of black style, many white middle-class rebels opted for hair extensions or plaited bobtails, brought to the market by Simon Forbes of Antenna in Kensington. Pundits could leave the salon with a headful of pretend dreadlocks. For the more adventurous, an artistic installation of vertically upright hair columns and shaved back and sides guaranteed a picture in style mags.

7. Iconic designers

The 1980s saw British design take centre stage and everyone agreed on the undisputed queen: Vivienne Westwood, who offered a heady mix of instinctive innovation and intended agitation, collaborating with Malcolm McLaren to channel the twin forces of music and street style into high-end catwalk. She pioneered underwear as outerwear way before Madonna made Jean Paul Gaultier’s corsetry her go-to stage look.

8. Fashion TV

Channel 4’s Swank and Network 7, both programmes I worked on, were appetisers to the BBC’s The Clothes Show. I joined in 1986 with Jeff Banks and Selina Scott, and we covered everything from street style to John Galliano’s earliest work. The Clothes Show reached 157 million homes worldwide for 12 years. And with only four TV channels in the UK, at 5pm on Sunday it was rugby or us.

9. Banner headline T-shirts

Katharine Hamnett dominated with a canny combination of utility chic and mouthy socialist-idealist politics. In 1983 her first banner headline T-shirt featured the words ‘Choose Life’. In 1984 she greeted Margaret Thatcher with ‘58% Don’t Want Pershing’, a protest against missile deployment.

10. Hip-hop women

Hip-hop gave us feisty, full-hipped and lipped divas. Roxanne Shanté’s ‘Roxanne’s Revenge’ and MC Lyte’s ‘I’m not havin’ it’ voiced extreme dissatisfaction with male portrayals of femininity and paved the way for the likes of Monie Love and Queen Latifah. A successful female recording artist in those days remained fully dressed and didn’t gyrate like a nympho porn star… some things were definitely better back then.