1980s Fashion Print
by Marnie Fogg
Batsford, 192 pages, 2009
I’m a big fan of Marnie Fogg’s work. To date, she has authored over 20 books about fashion, ranging from the quite general Fashion Design Directory to the very specific Vintage Weddings, and has tackled all sorts of topics in between, my favourite being the fabulous Boutique: A ’60s Cultural Phenomenon, published in 2003. She has a knack for putting together wonderful and heavily illustrated books that are meant to be referred to again and again. 1980s Fashion Print is no exception.
Fogg has tackled other decades in this series — the 1950s and 1960s each have individual volumes — but naturally it’s the 1980s of which I’m most fond. In the book, Fogg takes five big trends in textiles of the decade and breaks each down, discussing the trend’s origins and place in the fashion world. There are interviews, too, with fabric designers, and as one would hope, plenty of full-colour photos of prints. The chosen trends are Neon Blitz, Glamazon, Catch the Wave, Urban Jungle and Radical Classical, a range that spans from couture to the street and the beach.
The book, like much of Fogg’s work, leans very British, with design collective The Cloth and design team Val Furphy and Ian Simpson of Furphy Simpson taking centre stage. This is not a bad thing. The prints produced by London-based designers were sought after beyond British borders, from Japan, Italy, America and beyond.
1980s Fashion Print is by no means a complete guide to textile design of the day, but it’s a worthy overview and peek into a specific world-within-the-fashion-world at a time when bold prints were having a big moment.
