Party Like It’s 1985!

Many of you won’t remember the 80s. Happily I’m not one of them! I remember the fun loving, confident and carefree 1980's well. Really well, in fact. It was the era when stacking bracelets became a thing  and fashion was just loud and proud in every way. Disco had fallen out of favour a little and consequently the music scene was blossoming into a crazily eclectic mix of new and exciting genres as the electric synth became more widely used. It was a time of invention and celebration with a vibrant youth culture emerging ready to pave the way for those 90s kids, and I was lucky enough to be one of them!

Michael Jackson resurfaced in the early 80s to give us what is still one of the best selling albums of all time - Thriller. Madonna was on the ascendence with hits like Papa Don’t Preach and Like A Virgin, and Prince had us swaying to the incredible Purple Rain album released in 1984. There was Human League, Haircut 100, Yazoo, Duran Duran. The list goes on. Of course Disco didn’t disappear completely, lest we forget those seminal films, Saturday Night Fever and Grease, released in the late 70s that had several hits pouring out of them well into the 80s.

Of course there were lots of other things going on in the 80s, but I like to think of it as a decade of discovery, experimentation and, above all, neon! We called it fluorescent at the time, and it was massive. Bright pink mini-skirts with fluorescent yellow tights and luminous green leg warmers. Oh yes! The brighter the better was the order the of the day. There’s no real record as to where this trend came from, but it’s thought it was purely the end result of a lot of excitement!