The 80s were such a polarising decade, politically, culturally ... so it's not surprising that the fashions still split the jury. In the week of Princes William's and Harry's documentary about their mother Diana, the fault lines have clarified: those who look back on the decade's clothesfondly tend not to have been around when it was actually unfolding.
Those who shudder at the clunky proportions, unsophisticated footwear and mullet-ant hair tendencies are generally those who had to live through them first hand. I hated fashion in the 80s and I still do. But that could just be me.
Jackie Kennedy was lucky to come to fashion's attention in her era. Photo / Getty Images
It does raise the question of what makes an era classic - the 1950s - and what leaves it in the dung-heap of curiosity. Time is a huge factor. In 1937, James Laver, the art historian and V&A curator, worked out a 150-year timeline for fashion. To precis, he suggested that a design that was 10 years ahead of its time is generally considered indecent, while 10 years after its moment, it's usually regarded as hideous. Twenty years after, it's dismissed as ridiculous; 50 years makes it appear quaint, 70 years charming, 150 years, and it's back to being beautiful.
Laver was evidently on to something, even if his time line has itself suffered from a time warp. Revisions happen much faster now.
But are some decades inherently better at fashion than others? The 80s has been revived at least three times already. Yet the resurrections have always felt a bit forced, extremely dilute and only of real interest to lovers of kitsch and the so-bad-it's-good genre.
The 1950s on the other hand, apart from their 20-year exile to fashion Siberia during the 60s and 70s have been in style for women across the board for decades. Shirtwaisters, kitten heels, bracelet length sleeves - they've all become such staples that we barely even think of them as the property of a specific era.
Is it because those small waists and accentuated hips and breasts play to a classic ideal of female beauty? Or is it because in some details, the 1950s, with its simpler pleasures and expectations, though not its socially repressive mores, appeals?
Grace Kelly was lucky to come to fashion's attention in the 50s and 60s.
If each era is a reaction against the previous, it follows that some decades will subscribe to our instinctive aesthetic preferences, while others will challenge them. Lucky Grace Kelly for coming to the world's attention in the 1950s. And lucky Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy for floating across the 1960s, the first half of which, with delicate, ladylike athletic lines, was particularly suited to them both.
Hepburn and Kennedy were outstandingly stylish and elegant, and would probably have looked wonderful in any era, yet even they weren't at their best in the 80s. Google pictures if you don't believe me.
Both women helped define their eras, just as Diana has, for better or worse, come to define the 80s. While the princess shimmered through the decade (she had the same gauzy qualities of Marilyn Monroe), her clothes from that period often look like curiosities now.
1980s Diana.
It wasn't until the mid-90s that she truly hit her stride. Now there was a fashion decade. (Or is that just me again?)
The sleeker silhouettes, the melting away of brash 80s colours, jarring accessories and awkward proportions ... the 1990s were to the 1980s what the Romantics were to the bewigged, panniered Bourbons.
How clever of the 90s to map Diana's personal trajectory from spurned Royal to independent global figure.
1990s Diana.
Style talks
1950s "I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face." - Grace Kelly, actor and Princess of Monaco.
1960s "Sex is a bad thing because it rumples the clothes." - Jackie Kennedy, First Lady.
1970s In the early 70s, I had shoulder-length hair, bell-bottom pants, love beads and shirts that laced up at the front. But then I smartened up." - Tom Ford, American fashion designer.
1980s "I didn't like the 80s at all; it was a vulgar moment of fashion." - Valentino Garavani, Italian fashion designer.
1990s "Fashion was in a crisis up until the mid-90s and, when it came out of the crisis, it was a very different place. It was a place that nurtured and cultivated young entrepreneurial designers." - Tim Gunn, fashion consultant, Project Runway
2000s "I like my money right where I can see it - hanging in my closet." - Carrie Bradshaw, fictional star of Sex and the City, season six, episode 75.
2010s "I have an image of what a British gentleman looks like, and that image finds real expression in Prince Charles. He is beyond fashion - he is an archetype of style." - Donatella Versace, fashion designer
