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In the early 80s most of British fell in love with the fairytale of the romance of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles of Wales. Diana played family with her husband Prince Charles and sons William and Henry inside and outside Kensington Palace. She did it well, through could hardly be remarked with BAFTA, and became a recognized fashion icon, like Jacqueline Kennedy was in the 60s, — thanks to her refined, but else quite simple wardrobe, or, more likely, the costumes for the famous play. That started with her romantic wedding dress made of 40 meters of silk fabric by Elizabeth and David Emanuel and consisted of a corsage with sleeves in Empire style, a fluffy skirt trimmed with ancient English lace and a 7.5-meter traîne. The dress of Princess Diana inspired designers to create romantic collections and thousands of young girls, all over the world, — to wear dresses with wide skirts to knees, silk blouses with romantic flounces and small collars, ruffles, neckties and bows.

A blond girl in “Take On Me” Music Video, drawn in a kind of magic dream with the mischievous imp in a leather jacket, —looks like Princess Diana in a simple unadorned baggy dress and with a fashionable hairstyle of around 1981-1982.

Since 1985 up to 1992, “The Golden Girls”, an American sitcom, was aired on television and gained huge popularity proved with winning eleven “Emmy” awards, four Golden Globes Awards. The series also put an end to NBC’s ratings slump, along with “The Cosby Show”, “227”, “Night Court”, “Miami Vice”, and “L.A. Law”, so was remade in countries across Europe in 2000s. Blanche the lusty harlot, Rose the “dumb blonde”, Dorothy, a sarcastic supply teacher, and her hilarious mother Sophia come from Sicily — those zingy grandmas gave no way to girls of the younger age and showed up the right style for grown-ups who are still in search for true love. They could wear floral garments of bold colours as their casual wear, flashing elegance and femininity, reverentially veiled beyond silk, crepe de Chine, cashmere, cotton, chiffon, and satin. The costume designer Judy Evans did a wonderful job keeping her eye on the Golden Girls to dress up à la mode in glittering black or pastel-coloured evening gowns of square silhouettes with emphatic wide shoulders and obscure waist.

Meanwhile, there were mainly two types of evening skirts for romantic looks those days: fluffy or fitting skirts, — the ones that would be completely unacceptable even for the bravest grandmas. When the night fell down a city, dreamy young ladies poshed up themselves in dresses by Versace, Escada, Emanuel Ungaro, Christian Lacroix, Valentino, Cerutti, or Chanel, — trimmed with lace, guipure, or tulle, and wore long gloves, drawings one’s attention to beauty of hands and grace of movements. The illustrations by Tony Viramontes show those images to us to the full extent of their power, among with yuppies, the impression, which notable names make, and the latest quite things they produce.

During the day, clothing was simpler: blouses with flounces and ruffles, jackets, and typically fitting high waist trousers, pencil skirt, case dresses, and so on. Oversized pullovers of soft materials made a girl looking small, sensual and fragile, among with laced stockings put together with heavy leather boots or a pair of sport-chic shoes adding a pinch of obstinacy to the whole image as a self-defense. Laced accessories were quite normal: lace gloves, lace headbands, lace details on dresses, etc.

We shall take a look, briefly, at tendencies of 80s fashion that would help in restoring a romantic retro-image these days.

The plushy velour, which essentially combined the luxurious feel of velvet with the stretchy properties of spandex, was everywhere in 1980s. Foremost designers put out cozy v-neck pullovers made of velour. Velour trousers look elegant and do catch an eye so dress them up with a turtleneck of darker shadow and a small tiny chiffon or silk neckerchief of a colour as similar as possible (or exactly the same). A relative look would be perfect for work on Friday, for attending or giving a lecture, or for doing some business in town. To be on save side, pick gray colour.

Most of dreamy girls of 80s would decorate their hairdos with atlas ribbons, bows and ties. Louder than any average one of those, scrunchies, done up in a sparkling fabric or a bright saturated colour, — kept side ponytails and long hair the right way, and more — started being used as a wrist accessory. The scrunchies are best for wearing them at school or in everyday clothes, with wavy one-side pigtails and a T-shirt with a logo.

Some psychologists claim such an accessory as big circled earrings looks voluptuous. During the 1980s, door-knockers were worn by everyone from pop stars to the girl in the next door. They were perfect on the score of loudness. Through such a feature is the reason for not being used in a romantic retro-image, — you can, however, take them on in order to avoid looking too mawkish in light pink knitted clothes.

A devoted follower of fashion ought to take Lady Gaga’s look, when she interviewed His Holiness Dalai Lama, as a sample and pay attention for the dresses by Hanae Mori. The intelligent and well-educated Japanese designer followed the European tradition in her work and kept on very feminine, smart, refined style, also used simple cut and tiny silk fabrics.

The costume of C.C. Catch for the music video on her song “Nothing but a Heartache” of 1989 may be taken as a precious worthy sample of the romantic style of the late 80s. That image of a girl in love is full of high poetic inspiration. She reminds a bird in her small black dress with tight waist — the movements are soaring, they can be compared with wing-stroke of parotia. And even through she is acting in a desert — she lost in the great ocean of love, as great as this desert with its rare “oases”.

As we made it clear previously, the 1980s was an époque of excess: representatives of the generation preferred catchy models in clothing, very short length of a skirt or pants, too fitting or too fluffy cut. Romantic beauty is a typical style for those days, but it still included wild shoulders and glittering fabrics of bold colours. Some people, engaged in fashion industry, say that fashion tendencies come back in 25 years, so now it is time to think about clap eyes on mom’s old wardrobe.

There is the dust of what the Information Age promised in childhood settled in the corners of collective consciousness of artists, musicians and designers of retro wave. Countless television screens flickered in the neon fog, flaws colored the views of Japanese cities, and horizon turned into a painting of Color Field. Somewhere in that city, a young yuppie, the symbol of a new era, raced on a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette or expensive Ferrari to ultra-modern lonely apartment on high green hills in an elite sleeping area.

Although the 1980s go together with brightness, and for it was a decade of contrasts, as discussed earlier, the image of yuppie was a contrast to the toilettes by Christian Lacroix. Young wealthy people, leading an active secular lifestyle built on passion for careers and material success, began to be called “yuppies” at the beginning of the decade. The”Newsweek” magazine called 1984 the year of yuppie.

We can conditionally identify several subspecies of a luxurious lifestyle: for example, the aristocratic one — this life is lived by people whose profit is not a result of their professional activities, but allows them to do nothing. “Yuppie” is a luxurious lifestyle, but it flows in office and at business meetings.

The external image of most of yuppies, manners, gestures and speech, will write a story of one and tell about the world outlook:

1. Yuppie tolerates random sexual relations before marriage, and adultery as termination of a contract between free equal parties, — that actually does not prevent from recognizing the institution of family.

2. Yuppie is cynical, pragmatic and disdain for less successful people (“losers”). And more, yuppie is apolitical.

3. The most favorite topic for conversation is lack of time. Public talk over illnesses and other problems in the yuppies environment is not accepted, because the conditions of the game require healthy and energetic look.

4. In the yuppies environment, manifesting of envy and hatred is considered to be a destiny of losers and is tabooed completely; open aggression is forbidden as well. The environment has to look friendly and polite. Almost all potential unfriendliness comes down to giving hints — sometimes rude — of misery and failures of an interlocutor, especially based on having personal accessories not expensive enough or modern.

5. For yuppies, it is not peculiar to boast of the suffered crooks in the lot as achievements. They are usually kept in secret. A typical yuppie forgets them quickly, remembering only at the level of reason and cold logic. Long-term emotional fixation in such situations is not yuppies’ trait.

6. Yuppies almost have no concept of “I deserve”. In this case, they do not cause any rejection of the phrase “The early bird gets the worm” understood often as a natural law.

7. Yuppies, as a rule, do not have close friends. Yuppies rarely are immersed in an informal community — motorcyclists, fans of musical styles, role games and historical reconstruction, unorganized tourism and hikes, etc. Such “informals” are often despised by yuppies for “playing the fool”.

8. Two yuppies can make a very strong family couple in view of similar values f both. Nevertheless, for female yuppies, the so-called “serial monogamy” is characteristic — a sequence of several short-lived marriages.

9. Gender roles in the yuppie environment are erased. Classical femininity is not appreciated; classical masculinity is considered senseless and vulgar. Gender plays its role, exclusively, in situations of erotic courtship. Attitudes towards random sexual relations are highly tolerant; they are considered an inevitable side of life.

10. Yuppies are those consumers on which the “consumer society” is based.

A typical respectable yuppie wore a strict and very pricey business suit, in which there was nothing extravagant: no wild colors, no piercing; pants of acceptable width, a shirt of conservative cut and neutral color with an expensive tie, as well as shiny spotless shoes and a handkerchief in the pocket of a jacket. Men preferred double-breasted jackets by Armani or Hugo Boss with huge shoulder pads that, however, through the taboos, made the silhouette manlier. The impression could be softened with flowing textures of fabrics or narrow sparkling ties. This manner of dressing served as a symbol of ambition and expressed an internal life position.

In 1979, for the first time in history, a woman became the prime minister of Great Britain — Margaret Thatcher. From 1981 to 1989, the series “Dynasty” was broadcasted on television. The characters played by Linda Evans and Joanne Collins were the personification of the image of a prosperous woman. In 1988, the movie “Business Girl” appeared on the screens, in which actresses Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver wore clothing in an office style. All this spurred the interest in women’s business clothes. The female yuppies also wore a fitted suit with emphasized square-built shoulders, a short skirt and a smart expensive blouse. The business woman’s suit was a kind of armor in her struggle for equal rights and duties with men in a career and in the life of society. Shoulder pads, borrowed from men’s fashion, made the impression of power and authority and the dream of emancipation to come to reality.

It should be mentioned that the cut of a business suit could be anything in strictness but not a classical one, in no case. A gorgeous image of a yuppie woman can be seen in the photos for the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar US, 1986, also in “Vogue” magazine in July/August, 1982.

Compared with the previous decade, skirt styles varied. Any length and width became possible. There was tulip skirt, layered skirt, skirt on a yoke, a bubble skirt, skirts with buttons, and trouser skirt. They were sewn straight or flared, with folds and without them, with cutouts and wrapovers.

Variety began to manifest in details, previously, having had rather limited forms. Fashion offered huge collars, which were finished with lace, frills and any other trim.

A rather interesting analogy can be cited with comparing yuppies of the 1980s with working women of approximately the same decade of the 19th century. In short, women of those days did all the work, up to the fact that, in the evening, they lighted the lanterns on streets, but, nevertheless, since the time of Napoleon, working women had no right to receive wages themselves —it was received exclusively by their husbands instead of them. With the development of industry and the growth of the urban population in the second half of the nineteenth century, changes in the social structure are associated. With tiny budgets of low- and medium-staged officials, technical workers and employees, a practical, but fashionable costume had become an urgent issue of everyday life. Therefore, the clothes were in dark colours. By the end of the 1870s, there was a skirt without train, which young girls were wearing for the street, and female workers preferred to wear it as everyday clothes. More Fashionable women began to decorate their dresses with starched collars of the male type, cuffs and dandy ties, stabbed with expensive brooches. Simplicity of a suit and modesty of trim symbolized independence and business life of a new social group. This helped the formation of a classic English set: a blouse, a skirt and a jacket. Tournure, which was introduced into fashion in the 1870s, briefly disappeared, and then returned. Thus, in 1880s fashion, duality appeared.

Emancipated women, striving for independence, either did not wear tournure at all, or wore small pads instead, while conservative women preferred old-fashioned designs that hampered their movement. The images of working women in shortened dresses of a simplified silhouette can be seen in the paintings of the salon painters (such as the Italian Giovanni Boldini (“Walking in the Park in Naples”, 1884), or James Tissot (“The Ball”, 1880; “On the Thames”, 1882) and the Impressionists (for example, as Auguste Renoir “Dance at Bougival”, 1883, or Manet “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”, 1883). Working as housekeepers, flower girls, maid, and mastering “male” professions — such as journalism, women began to demand equality, and at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries the suffragists appeared in the United States of America and in Great Britain, whose movement is considered to be “first-wave feminism“. The “second-wave feminism” is considered as ideas and actions related to the women’s liberation movement, which began to develop since the 1960s and advocated the full legal and social equality of men and women. Completion of this stage fell on the late 1980s and influenced fashion and culture in the yuppie environment, where, as we found out, it was not accepted to emphasize gender differences. Was this an effect or a cause — is a topic for another conversation, more complex and controversial, and, probably, has much less to do with fashion for a costume.

80s fashion, as a whole, ceased to insist on a single product for everyone, and designers started off making clothes not for the whole community, but for an individual who chooses a certain style. The culture of yuppies is a good example, the first one of those we are going to get known later.

Neon Through Eons: from 1980s to this day

Fluorescent pink, light green, electric blue and cold silver are just some of the colors that marked the 80s but it seems that they keep coming back to our utmost pleasure.

If we take a look at the contemporary trends we can help but notice a strong influence of neon colors that were all the rage back in the day, especially in the late 80s. The history repeats indeed and it’s one of those universal truths that also applies to fashion, given that neon trends keep persisting a last couple of seasons. The only things that change, however, are celebrities sporting them as well as inevitable reinventions of fashion styles and cuts of course.

Then – Madonna

desperately seeking susan

The fashion icon keeps introducing new and bold trends, even to this very day. And even though Madonna’s current style could be described as more geometrical and inclined to darker colors and edgy fabrics, it was all about neon back in the day. It’s worth mentioning that the diva never exaggerated in terms of combining neon pieces. A little bit of flashy pink here, a hint of electric blue there and there’s no danger of being mixed up for a scoreboard. Atta girl!

Now – Lady Gaga

Even if we entirely disregard the fact that Gaga’s stage originates from Queen’s undying hit, there are still so many retro influences both in Gaga’s visual style and music that one must be blind not to notice them. She might have entered a somewhat reduced phase now, but she has gone through a ton of experiments with various fabrics, cuts and neon colors that truly made a great statement about her unique personality.

Then – Prince

During his 80s phase the legendary singer cherished a unique style that consisted of baroque shirts and jackets that came in strong neon colors… Except for when he was shirtless of course!

Now – Katy Perry

Now, this is a true 80s gal that offers a great material for the case study on how to combine neon pieces perfectly. On the other hand, it seems that her love extends to spandex and lycra as well. In words of Bill and Ted: Excellent!

Then – Whitney Houston

Whitney was more than just a drop-dead gorgeous lady, she was an exceptional musical talent whose death is still mourned all around the globe. Her neon makeup choices back in the day can really tell that a beautiful face is always beautiful, regardless of the color choices.

Now- Nicky Minaj

It is even hard to imagine Nicky in anything other than neon – from hair and makeup to provocative outfits that basically became her personal signature!

Then – Paul Stanley

Kiss really rocked during the 80s. This was the time when they decided to leave the prevalent black and white combos behind and wash off the makeup from their faces, which resulted in some pretty excessive neon clothing choices, additionally “enhanced” with tons of pearls and sequins. Some might hate it but we retro lovers find it quite interesting.

Now – Kelly Osbourne

Ozzy’s daughter went through some really different phases and ultimately become one of the fashion influencers of today. And if she says that neon is okay, who are we to judge?

Then – Boy George

According to Culture Club’s timeless hit, karma is a chameleon, but so is the frontmen of the band, a famous Boy George, at least in the terms of the multiple colors and neon new wave makeup he was wearing fearlessly at the same time.

Now – Leona Lewis

A hot singer really knows how to strut her stuff, especially when wearing a cropped neon corset paired up with a deep waist tight skirt and we can’t help but to approve.

Then – Olivia Newton-John

Everyone wanted to get physical with Olivia and we firmly believe this neon outfit is to blame!

Now – Jessie J

Blue overalls in combination with goldish black jacket with discreet but noticeable shoulderpads? It is called retro where we come from!

What do you think of our list? Did we forget to mention someone? Feel free to spill your thoughts in the comment section below!