Focus on ’84

The Fashion Year, Volume II
edited by Emily White
Zomba Books, 160 pages, 1984

In London, it was all about Body Map and Katharine Hamnett’s oversize T-shirts with messages like “Save the World” in big, block letters. In Paris, designers stepped up their game to fight the previous year’s embarrassment at being shown up by the Japanese. Karl Lagerfeld debuted his eponymous collection and Claude Montana’s winter pastels had fashion editors buzzing. Tulip skirts and trousers walked the runways in Milan, while outside the shows, Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace reached a level of fame in their home country that rivaled that of film actors and rock stars — making them the first true celebrity designers, handlers and security detail in tow. In New York, it was Stephen Sprouse’s acid colours and Norma Kamali daring to take denim beyond simply jeans that had everyone talking.

I don’t remember all of this, or know it by heart. It’s all thanks to The Fashion Year, Volume II.

The second of three yearly wrap up books published in the early/mid-1980s, Volume II has a new editor and a decidedly kicky tone. Both the spring/summer and fall/winter collections of 1984 are summed up neatly by city in the first third of the book to explore specific trends more deeply.

The essays have a younger focus this time around, with Blitz magazine founder Iain R. Webb writing on London street fashion (later in the book there is a feature on Blitz magazine itself), and the format is broken up an in/out charts with “Truly Cool” being the in and “Fashion Victim” being the out.

There are features on the glam rock revival, a history of St. Martin’s School of Art’s fashion program and interviews with then-fashion editor of The Observer, Sally Brampton, stylist Nathalie Cavendish and designer Ronaldus Shamask.

There are surprises, too, most notably the 12-pages dedicated to fetish fashion subculture and a rambling, trying-to-be-clever-but-failing essay titled “If I Don’t Get Those Cha-Cha Heels: The Frontier Ethic of Anti-Fashion” that seems out of step with the book’s readable style.

But it’s easy to forgive a single stumble when the rest of The Fashion Year: Volume II is so vivid, fun and packed with pictures that so successfully bring the style of 1984 alive.