(no subject)

[webofevil]

This is the first retro fashion year I have lived through where I was conscious enough the first time around of the fashion currently being aped. I find I can’t view it with affection; in fact it’s creeping me out. Going into Top Man now, it turns out, is like walking into the Virgin Megastore when I was 14, and not in a good way. The colours and designs are just too familiar. As flaneurette put it, “They haven’t run with it”, and that’s exactly what they haven’t done. It’s as if warehouses full of this gear have sat silent for 20 years, waiting for the moment the long-touted 80s revival would finally take off. Except that, Top Man’s quality control being what it is, the net effect is of a sci-fi plot involving sinister aliens trying to fool kidnapped Earthlings that they are still on their home planet by surrounding them with unconvincing knock-offs of ephemera familiar from home. Consequently the current 1980s wave doesn’t make me feel old, just somehow... unsettled.

Comments

[egremont.livejournal.com]

The eighties specs. They weren't red-rimmed, were they? Around Shoreditch, Brick Lane, etc, it seems every second person has a pair on.

It must be the only part of London where everyone used to dress like Mike Reid, but now everyone's dressed like Mike Read.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Not red, just... big and eighties. Really not good with a fin. The net effect was of a crude street caricature of Danny Wallace. Smeared in shit.

[lifesizemonkey.livejournal.com]

There's an '80s revival going on? *Christ* when ISN'T there. Please not the acid house :(

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the acid house. The t-shirts, at least.

[pvcdiva.livejournal.com]

yes, yes, yes...I feel your Baudrillardian pain...

I keep seeinh all these teenage art students with their fringes in there eyes, too much eyeliner, in stripey tops, skin tight jeans and leg warmers and I am over come with panic!

Hence my own style heading towards 1890...

[nja.livejournal.com]

Does this mean we get Maggie back as prime minister?

[j4.livejournal.com]

The 80s revival is so last week, I thought we were well into the 90s revival now.

I am horrified to discover that googling for "90s theme party" gets relevant hits.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

Is anyone short enough to have noticed if fluorescent Terry-towlleling socks have returned?

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

These were among the shoddy items that convinced me Top Man need to instigate a harsh new regime in the sweatshops I presume they source this stuff from. Not only have they returned, they're actually worse.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

What about snow-washed jeans with big transfers of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble on the front elevation?

[pageantmalarkey.livejournal.com]

*small voice* Jon and I were those people.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Then tell him those glasses don't suit him.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Some clarification may be needed. pageantmalarkey and rawrphotography were not actually the people we saw. What’s more, (a) rawrphotography is one of the few people on God’s earth who actually suits a Hoxton fin, and (b) if you saw these two high-fiving over their fashionwear, it would gladden your heart, rather than make you almost cry laughing.

[pageantmalarkey.livejournal.com]

Jon cut my hair this weekend for me. It gladdened my heart much.