Fashion Trends

The 1980s have been characterised as a period of consumerist excess riding on the back of an economic and industrial boom and expressed in a contemptuous flaunting of wealth through expensive homes, cars and designer label fashion.  Outwardly superficial and frivolous this image does not do justice to one of the most diverse and creative decades in 20^th century fashion ranging from the exuberant historical and multi-cultural referencing of Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix’s vibrant mix of colour, pattern and trims and Katharine Hamnett’s protest slogan T-shirt ’Worldwide Nuclear Ban Now’.

The decade began with the fairytale wedding of the shy and beautiful Lady Diana Spencer and the heir to the British throne Prince Charles on the 29th July 1981. Copies of Diana’s romantic crinoline inspired dress with its enormous skirt, puffed sleeves and frill trimmed bodice were in bridal stores the next day setting the scene for 1980s wedding dress style.

Out of London’s nightclubs emerged the dressed-up glamour of the New Romantics. Experimenting with dress, exotic hair and makeup they created their own glamorous gender bending fantasy creations inspired by the exotic androgyny of singer Boy George, the innovative character dressing of Leigh Bowery and the baroque excess of Adam Ant. 

However there was a much more serious side. As more women entered the workforce and moved into senior positions they adopted a suitably sober and functional wardrobe based on the male executive’s staple of a well-tailored suit. Jackets featured broad padded shoulders adding an air of authority and power to the female silhoette, which when matched with a slim fitting skirt, reasserted her femininity. Designers like Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren armed women who wanted to ‘Dress for success’ with a working wardrobe that carefully negotiated this balance between masculine and feminine style. Women also discovered the slimming effect padded shoulders had on the rest of their body with the result that shoulder pads began to appear in all forms of dress from evening wear to T-shirts.

The image of the powerful women was underpinned by the popularity of aerobics and the gym which women were visiting not just to lose weight but to reshape the body into a more toned and muscular form.

The greatest innovations were occurring in the work of Japanese designers Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto who were presenting some of the most creative but challenging styles. Instead of form fitting clothes enhancing and sexualising the body the Japanese designers created oversize, asymmetrical, unstructured layers that disguised the body. They purposely included slashes and tears, faded and distressed fabrics and raw edges in their garments, and championed black as a colour for clothes for all times of the day.

In Australia designers like Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson were forging a unique vision of Australian dress, one that didn’t look to the trend-driven fashion mainstream for inspiration but drew on Australia’s cultural and natural landscape. Theirs was not a purist expression of Australian identity but one that melded an eclectic assortment of elements drawn from colour theory, art history, theatre, Chinese opera, Buddhism, European haute couture as well as the dress and textiles of other cultural and indigenous groups. Jenny Kee’s vibrant ‘Opal Oz’ silk print was used by Karl Lagerfeld in his first collection for Chanel in 1983

Zandra Rhodes is one of the icons of British fashion with a strikingly independent signature based on her original textile and fashion designs. Her work stems from her personal and often quirky interpretations of her life and surroundings with textile designs drawn from such diverse experiences as trips to the supermarket and visits to Uluru. She was the first international designer to explore Australia’s unique natural environment in her work.

Zandra dressed Diana, Princess of Wales, Freddie Mercury and Diana Ross and created memorable photographic images through her colourful integrations of make-up, hair, clothing, photography and graphic design with the talents of other Australian artists including Richard Sharah and Robyn Beeche.

Tokio Kumagai was one of the most inventive shoe designers of the 20^th century. After graduating from Tokyo’s Bunka College of Fashion in 1970, he settled in Paris working for the fashion house Castelbajac and later Cerutti in Italy. In 1980 he opened his first shoe boutique in Paris. As a shoe designer he led the way in combining an innovative mixture of traditional shapes and construction with the witty and inventive use of designs. He was inspired by the work of artists such as Salvador Dali, Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock as well as playfully mimicking subjects such as sports cars, mice and African art.

The Australian landscape remains the central source of inspiration for Linda Jackson’s work. However interwoven throughout her designs are influences from diverse dress and textile traditions ranging from the bias cut forms of Madeliene Vionnet to Chinese and African robes.

From appliquéing, embroidering and painting native flowers Jackson moved into creating spectacular three dimensional flower form dresses like her ‘Waratah’ dress which demonstrated her prodigious technical skills and creative independence. Chiffon and in particular silk taffeta with its intense jewel like colours and facility for sculptural effects became her favourite textiles.

Being someone who has led a fairly nomadic lifestyle Linda appreciated the way taffeta could appear voluminous and spectacular yet pack down into a small bag. This concurred with her interest in Japanese dress and the way the seemingly capacious kimono could be folded into a small package when stored.

Robert Rosen is one of Australia's foremost portrait and social pages photographers and an astute observer of Sydney society. In the 1980s he worked front row at the European fashion shows for various international and Australian magazines but on returning to Australia chose the more informal and intimate format of social pages and backstage documentation of Sydney society and alternative underground scene.

Simon Reptile was an individualist and eccentric, a performance artist and style maverick who made spectacular appearances at Sydney's infamous 'Rat Parties' and the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. In this photograph, Rosen captures his unconventional personality and style. Simon Reptile appears to be evoking the 19th century dandy with his aristocratic pose, high stiff collar, necktie, rakish sash and long coat, however the muted palette and subtlety found in the dress of the historical dandy is here subverted through the loud clash of colour, pattern and motif, through the revealing of the garter, the appearance of the waistcoat outside the coat, and the carefully coiffed but wildly patterned hair and makeup. Reptile championed the work of Australian designers, particularly those creating innovative textile design. Here he is dressed in a T-shirt by Sara Thorn (who co-founded Galaxy, Abyss and funkessentials) and a coat featuring a screenprinted design by Kathy McKinnon.

Dinosaur Designs was started in 1985 by three enterprising friends Louise Olsen, Liane Rossler and Stephen Ormandy while studying drawing and painting at the City Art Institute, Sydney. They have gone on to be one of Australia’s most successful design businesses.

They began making richly coloured jewellery in hand-painted ‘Fimo’ worked in a plethora of shapes with subjects drawn from great works of art and icons of popular culture. The trio then began experimenting with resin casting, a highly adaptable technique of moulding shapes in infinite combinations of colour and shapes. The flexibility of this process also meant they could produce seasonal ranges to complement fashion directions.

Their Sun and Sea outfit was a humorous reworking of the classic Paco Rabanne space-age dresses of the 1960s. Dinosaur Designs used resin sea-shell shapes to create a sparkling dress suitable for Australia’s shimmering beaches.

Jan Jansen is a Dutch designer who creates works of art for the feet. Trained in Rome he designs for his own range as well as for the house of Christian Dior and Bally of Switzerland. In 1985 he received the 'Kho Liang le' award from the Amsterdam Art Council (the first shoe designer to receive a prize for industrial design).

The 'Love' shoes designed by Jan Jansen are a witty play on the theme of love. The shoes have an inverted wedge heel and are detailed with red metallic leather folded to resemble a heart and perhaps lips. The wedge was a heel innovation first introduced by Ferragamo in the 1930s and became very popular throughout the 1940s. Jansen’s shoes are characteristically extreme in form with unusual silhouettes and strong colour combinations. As such his shoes aren’t designed for conservative woman but for those who prefer to don wearable sculptures that go beyond seasonal changes.

Two major and interconnected themes played a significant role in the work of Jenny Kee - her love of Australia’s unique natural environment and imagery relating to death and regeneration. The impact of bushfires on Australia’s native plants particularly resonated with her poetic vision of nature and sprung from her own experience of living in the Blue Mountains surrounded by native bushland frequently ravaged by fire.

From this devastation Jenny watched the bush regenerate with a showing of green shoots, leaves and flowers even more spectacular after their ordeal. Her ‘Waratah and Blackboy’ print on this beach ensemble features an abstracted design of waratahs emerging from the blackened bush after a fire, the design slashed by the blackened flowering stems of grass trees.