Reflecting on recent retro style
Well, it’s been a minute!
This year we’re keeping our “Thanksgiving table” simple with a fall picnic and fresh food.
A post on learning to run the race, even if you’re still figuring it all out…
Today’s post is about pasta. And unpredictability.
Neon lighting–check. Glass block–check. Bright hues and geometric design referencing the Memphis-Milano movement–check. Throw in a dash of 1950s malt-shop, and you have the ’80s teen hangout in all of it’s glory!
At a recent Easter party, I became giddy like my students when a plastic egg opened and a neon spring emerged. But this wasn’t your ordinary coil… It was a coil bracelet, or a “springy bracelet,” as I used to call them when collecting enough to shamelessly cover my arms as a child in the ’80s.
This music video from 1982 features a fictional wedding in which Human League vocalist Joanne Catherall weds her groom while lead singer Philip Oakey pines over her from the upper balcony. Yes, just like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. Only this is a New Wave Dustin Hoffman with killer cheekbones and a beauty mark (which seems to be a requirement for band members, as mirrored by Catherall and her blonde counterpart Susan Ann Sulley).
This week, I enjoyed the design challenge of creating a dramatic floral arrangement to be used in a portrait that will be my official blog photo! My love of ’80s design has resulted in a large collection of ceramics–’80s Deco vases (as shown above), spherical pieces, swans in a variety of hues. This spring I decided to document my collection, and to be included in the picture.
I’m eagerly awaiting tonight’s Cut Copy show in Austin, Texas! This ’80s-influenced band from Melbourne, Australia has skyrocketed to indie popularity in the seven years since the release of their first album Bright Like Neon Love in 2004. I remember seeing the band at South by Southwest in 2005 with the guy I’d just started dating (now my husband), and I was heavily drawn to the upbeat, layered synthpop that captivated the crowd.
These last few weeks, Mirror80 has spent time exploring 1980s tribal and jungle styles, which often overlap. From colorful energetic patterns to palm leaf-laden music video sets, the ’80s gone wild evoked by both jungle- and tribal-inspired visuals is filled with intense hues, vegetation-rich patterns and bold geometry.
The ’80s were wild! We’re talking about a decade where people wore socks with high heels and rubber guards over the faces of their watches. But nothing was wilder than the jungle-themed visuals that permeated the art, entertainment and fashion realms. From tropical prints to vegetation-rich settings in music videos, it truly was a jungle out there…
Since we spent last week exploring ’80s tribal fashion and we’re getting ready to celebrate ’80s jungle style, here’s a little primal ditty from British group Toto Coelo (known in America as Total Coelo). They’re not wearing cheetah print frocks or hanging from vines, but the neon hut, palm trees and rhythmic chanting certainly give the piece a jungle-like feel.
On the heels of our ’80s Tribal Fashion post, we bring you the video for a track with a tribal sound: Bow Wow Wow’s 1981 single “Chihuahua.” The band is known for its African-influenced percussion. Drummer David Barbarossa, guitarist Matthew Ashman and bassist Leigh Gorman had previously been key members of Adam and the Ants (Bow Wow Wow’s tendency toward New Romantic fashions designed by Vivienne Westwood are reminiscent of the musicians’ Adam and the Ants days). If “tribal, New Wave romanticism” were a style, this band would emanate it!
As a counterpart to last week’s post on the return of ’80s Afropop, we were planning a follow-up post this week on ’80s musicians (and present-day acts) with a tribal sound. And then I found myself with an armful of clothes at the cash register of Forever 21 this weekend unable to believe my good luck. We’re postponing our tribal music/style post one week to focus on its tribal counterpart in the current fashion world–in case any readers want to high-tail it to Forever 21 stat to revel in all things ’80s, tribal and affordable!
