Fifty Fashion Looks That Changed the 1980s
by Paula Reed
Conran Octopus, 112 pages, 2013
I am always a bit skeptical of books that strive to offer a quick but complete summary of a subject. They often read as rushed and seem hastily slapped together, a publishers’ afterthought or quickie job to cash in on a trend. Too frequently, these are learn-nothing books, barely researched, with a narrow focus on the obvious, things those of us interested enough in the subject to pick the book up would already know.
It was with this skepticism that I approached Fifty Fashion Looks The Changed the 1980s. It sat in my to-read pile for months. Perhaps it was the Jane Fonda aerobics-pose cover that put me off most. But when I finally sat down earlier this week and settled in with the book, determined to see it through, cover-to-cover, I was pleasantly surprised.
Author Paula Reed, who has also written five other books in the series, covering decades from the 1950s up through the 1990s, has not only chosen her 50 looks to represent a decade wisely, she writes about each thoughtfully. And yes, there were even snippets of information I did not know, my favourite bit of trivia being that singer Sade studied fashion at Saint Martins College of Art and had her own menswear line before finding success as a singer.
Music, movies, magazines — they all play a part in Reed’s look back at the 1980s. As they should. It was a decade during which fashion soaked up popular culture and reflected it back on the runway. Ready-to-wear was the star and never before had women seen more style choices. It would have been lazy to simply focus on the designers of the decade when 1980s fashion was so much more.
Fifty Fashion Looks does indeed hit all of the marks in regards to the designers Reed chose to include. My personal picks — Christian Lacroix, Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana — all rate a section, as do ’80s darlings Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier and Ralph Lauren. And the book would have been incomplete without paying homage to the Japanese designers Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.
Narrowing down the top 50 influences on 1980s fashion would be no easy task and while Reed gets it right much of the time, there were a (very) few missteps that left me puzzled.
Why Boy George is tagged as an influence in 1987 I’m not sure. Culture Club’s biggest hits were in 1982-1984 and by ’87 his band and his look were basically over. Reed also shows a regional bias with the inclusion of certain UK brands and businesses that seem too local to have warranted inclusion. London retailer Joseph is singled out for its own feature, while a more global ’80s influencer like Gianni Versace barely scrapes by with a mention in the Miami Vice section.
But these are small things. Overall, Fifty Fashion Looks That Changed the 1980s is dead-on and a worthy overview that I’ll surely revisit again — this time with no skepticism or fear of disappointment.
