We’ve all done it worn something that we later regret. Flapping loons, tartan trews, floppy hats and platform shoes.
Luckily little photographic evidence exists.
This was brought on by the thought during the dark morning when your mind starts working overtime, and sleep can’t come. I had the idea years ago of emulating Peter Gabriel and adopting his reverse Mohican haircut, the wide shaved centre parting.
Did anyone try it?
Apart of course from Mr Gabriel.
I never did, is it too late now?
Is there some fashion faux pas in the wardrobe of your soul that you could bear to reveal?
Oh dear, far too many to mention. I do remember around 1980 my deeply regrettable flirtation with the New Romantic look meant I minced my way around the mean streets of Wakefield wearing Cuban heeled winkle picker shoes, multi pleated Bowie bag trousers, a pillar box red confederate shirt, a black cloak! (yes, you read it right the first time) and a floppy fedora hat. I remember once feeling rather proud when a laughing Teddy boy told me that I “looked like a Count.” It was only later that a friend explained that I had probably misheard this comment.
Well, I once looked down and realised I’d gone out wearing black shoes with a brown belt.
And nothing else.
For some reason I got it into my head that I would look cool in a pair of cowboy boots. I couldn’t afford a pair of decent cowboy boots so I bought a pair of cheap, tan-coloured cowboy boots. I persevered for about two weeks.
Men in cowboy boots – no.
Women in cowboy boots – ohhhhhhh yes.
Perv
You rang?
Brutus Gold. 58 inch flares. During the Punk Wars. “Muuuuum!”
Very short sawn-off denim shorts, with black and purple stripey tights and black DM boots with green laces. Topped off with a tie dye fringey tunic and a bandana round my (then long) hair, with black felt cowboy hat the crowning glory. No, hang on – that actually looked AWESOME 😀
Photographic evidence please. Forward to my PO box in the plain packaging. Research, you understand. (^ see above)
Sorry for my ignorance minibreakfast but are you a male or female contributor to the site?
Haha! I is a lady innit (not so you’d notice).
Confirmed.
Very confirmed.
I’ve worn all sorts of stoopid things in the past, when I wished to be in tune with current trends.
Loons and tie-dye t-shirts with stinky Afghan coats, cheesecloth shirts with high-waisted bags, a ghastly maroon suit etc. etc.
The only thing that I really regret, looking back, are the bad footwear choices. I.E. pointy-toed Cuban heel boots and clunky platform soles. My poor aching feet still reprimand me to this day.
The mid teens weekend look – dressed all in black, hair scraped back with gel, eyeliner above and below the eye, smoking Sobranie black Russians. Even then I was no sylph, but this was how my mates and i used to wander around Chester at the weekend (we actually lived closer to Wrexham, but even now I would advise against wearing anything which would look out of place at a rugby club disco around Wrexham; in the 1980s you’d have been signing your own death warrant).
From what I remember, for the first week or two as a student, I wore double denim and Doc Marten boots.
In 1971ish when I was 5, I was keen to dress like Noddy (not Holder, the one from Toytown) and my mother seemed to like the idea and made it happen. Everyone laughed and I felt foolish.
In 1975ish when I was 9, I saw a long coat that was brown, shiny and plastic in a catalogue and my mother agreed to order it. I wore it to school and everyone laughed and I felt foolish.
In 1983ish when I was 17 – one very wet day I cycled to work wearing yellow waterproofs over my suit. As I was then a very skinny and very tall person, my appearance was even more comical than usual. “Hey! It’s Big Bird!” shouted some card – gales of laughter from about 20 people. Very much like a bad memory in a film where you spin round and people are pointing and laughing from all sides. It was like that scene in the Elephant Man.
Of course, dressing like Noddy Holder at the age of 5 would not have been at all ridiculous.
If anything it would make it easier to explain the sideburns.
And the enormous top hat covered in circular mirrors.
Reminds me of one of my favourite jokes:
Q: Why does Noddy have a bell on his hat?
A: Because he’s a c**t
In 1986 my friends parents took me and him to the local Chinese for his 13th birthday. My ensemble for this event was: a lurid green and white stripy shirt, white jeans, a green bow-tie and green Mickey Mouse braces. I actually chose to wear this outfit, nobody made me.
My friend’s Mum looked at me as I arrived. “Well it’s nice when people have the courage of their convictions”. She said. I happily assumed that she got the edgy look I was trying to rock. Looking back it’s clear she thought I was a tit.
Mistakes, I’ve made a few…..
I was at the Roskilde Festival a few years back with some pals and one of them, who had recently worked in Africa, had brought along a magnificent, bright green, three piece outfit that he’d bought there: trousers, shirt and robe. To call it conspicuous would not do it justice. He was certainly not intending to wear it:
“No Englishman in their right mind would ever wear this, even at a rock festival!”
Well, if he was going throw down a gauntlet like that, there was only one thing for me to do.
What an odd day that turned out to be. It was an outfit that spread very good, Donovan-like vibes. All day complete strangers, many of them attractive young women, just came up and wanted to talk to me or just to have a hug.
Guru for a day!
Everything was groovy as long as I didn’t come near any mirrors and see what a total plonker I looked.
Awesome! Pics?
Yes, of the attractive young women!
I will do my best to satisfy you both!
Hurr!
Such stamina!
1980 and to finance myself through art college I was working behind the bar of a Working Mens Club – a Barnsley WMC bear in mind. I was wearing a baggy dark green jumper, tightish red jeans and black winkle pickers when a customer asked me “Why do you dress so weird?” It was a Thursday night, Country & Western night, and the guy that asked me this was dressed in full cowboy gear, gun included, in a WMC, in Barnsley….
Oh Jesus, where do I start?
12 years old: Piano tie over check shirt. Bright red flares (it’s 1984)
16 Years old: Green blouson-style leather jacket with tie dye jeans and large, brown, felt fedora. Matching large, brown mullet haircut.
17-19 years old: Tan cowboy boots worn with everything. Including the pastel green baggy suit worn at my sister’s graduation.
20 years old: My crowning glory. Baggy ‘Bill the Cat’ TShirt, baggy tan chinos and Hi-Tec trainers worn to a metal gig. I had some difficulty in the pit.
Feels good to get that lot out…
When you say “get that lot out” do you mean in a bin-bag?
My memory appears to have repressed all of the bad fashion errors I ever made. And with good reason too, I suspect.
I am still rocking the “reverse Mohican.” 30 years ago it was not what you’d call the height of fashion, but it appears to be gaining traction. Even The Edge has been seen without his hat recently.
1984. about 11.5 stone, 32 inch waist, Convoy ‘cut with spikier barnet at top; ‘psychedelic gleam in eye’. Mascara and eyeliner more often than not. Red fringed indian kurta top as seen worn by Robert Smith on TOTP, black PVC jeans, mid-calf black suede goth/biker boots with studded boot straps, whiff of patchouli and ‘rocky’. Favorite records? “A Kiss in the Dreamhouse” (surprised?), “A Wizard, a True Star”, and “Space Ritual”. That summer I lost a stone to adult chickenpox. I was fighting off girls with names like “snowmoon” with a shitty stick. I now look like Bun E Carlos.
Bun E Carlos!
It’s ironic that despite looking like an overweight accountant back in their heyday, Bun E has aged the best out of the Cheap Tricksters.
Full on ‘baggy’ in 1990: (very) flared jeans, hooded top.
1980s: Dungarees. Also 1980s- perms. Skin-tight red cords. Blue eyeshadow, frosted pink lipstick. I’m hating the current 80s revival- bringing back bad memories.
I may also have had a rah-rah skirt but I’ve repressed that memory.
Were you a member of Bananarama?
I really, REALLY wanted to be. 🙂
I definitely had a rah-rah skirt in the 80’s. And dungarees – bright blue cord – which was never going to be a good look for someone with a pearshape figure, but if Bananarama were wearing them that was reason enough! Also wore a bandana in my hair (though not at the same time as the dungarees).
But which one of Bananarama did you want to be? I wanted to be Siobhan but was probably closer to Keren.
I hope you’re both watching TOTP right now.
For one thing I can guarantee that you could sing at least as well as any of them.
They were just announced as “Live, on Top of the Pops!” before footage of them miming to Cruel Summer.
If you want to see/hear something really cruel, watch them singing properly live on The Tube.
Lovely lasses though but. plenty of people who can sing well are absolute twerps.
Ah, missed it! Love ‘Cruel Summer’.
Fear not, they’re back on tomorrow’s episode 🙂
I think I will just keep my memories intact without reality intruding! (Best way to go with ’80’s fashion).
I don’t think I actually wanted to be any of them, Ruby. It was their “We’re not bothering to dress up for anyone else, we’re wearing whatever is lying around and we feel like putting on” attitude that appealed to me.
black leather bike jacket with square quilting on the shoulder pads. painted alternate squares for a checkerboard effect.
being the biggest van halen fan I knew….back panel painted red with white random stripes in homage to eddie’s frankenstrat…..goddam cool as fuck, for 1983 anyway.
I did the biker jacket with painting on the back too.
Mine was Motorhead (as was a lot of other peoples).
The look topped off with steel toe cap boots, and an attempted Joey Ramone haircut (it was the same length all the way round, but the moment it hit my shoulders it curled skywards)
When the jacket was replaced, it was worn with a (badly) cut off denim jacket festooned with patches.
(this is still in the loft, but I haven’t yet found the right occasion to bring it out of hibernation)
Shiny yellow collarless shirt, tartan trousers with zips on the ankle, floppy hair and eyeliner. In the Rum Runner for a Bowie/Roxy night buying a round of drinks for the future Duran Duran (mainly Bacardi and cokes). Simon Le Bon still owes me a pint.
I’m pleased to say that as far as I remember I have never worn tartan trousers.
Had a thick red tartan work shirt one winter, which kept the cold out most admirably
It’s amazing how much stock I put into my clothes when I was a teenager, and now as a middle aged man (a fat, middle aged man, to boot) I couldn’t give a toss what I look like.
I do, unfortunately, have a reasonably vivid memory of tottering around Isleworth in 1973 in my first pair of platform shoes. I don’t know how I managed not to break my ankle in those things.
When we moved to the West Country in 1974 I once spied a pair of generously proportioned trousers at the weekly market. They had patch pockets on the thighs, voluminous flares, and I thought I would look like a god in them. They went great with my platform shoes. Well, I thought so, anyway.
Nowadays I can be seen – in public – in a stained t-shirt that’s two sizes too small (it shrank in the wash), a pair of sweatpants and flip-flops. And I don’t care!
My clothes often shrink in the wash too. Remarkably they even manage to shrink in the wardrobe.
Haberdashery skills for men: making a new hole in your belt.
Most of my early life (including my teens) I avoided fashion mistakes by ignoring fashion and just wearing the weirdest items of clothing that I could find in the attic and charity shops etc. I thought then – and still think – that I looked really cool, and I loved the stares I’d get.
But I remember a pair of expensive “Peter Pan boots” in the 80s that was cool in theory but looked idiotic on – especially when it was slippery in early winter and I could barely move because it turned out that the soles were made out of soap… 🙂
And the big 80s perm that a friend convinced me would look great on me was a disaster!
Combined with the unskilfully applied 80s make-up I wore at the time, I looked like a female version of Robert Smith, I’m sure.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. You had that Nena haircut that looked pretty cool.
If I remember correctly, that’s the one I got when I finally cut off what was left of the perm!
This must be the thread that ‘Moose The Mooche’ has been waiting his entire Afterword career for!
Why me in particular? The opportunities for perviness?
Well yes, I suppose so.
I showed up my first day of secondary school sporting an hawaain shirt and a curly perm I’d gotten over the summer because all the football players were getting them! 😂😂😂 I can’t believe I’m disclosing this. 😂😂😂😂
Red leather trousers I had made while in Istanbul. I topped this off with a white shirt and jacket and matching skinny red leather tie. Not as cool as I imagined and looked more like an extra in a Cronenberg movie
Oddly I take far more care over my appearance now than I ever did as a teenager. We were late 80s/early 90s indie kids. It was all about huge jumpers and DMs. I did have the full Mark Gardener floppy fringe, though. And even – at one point – an undercut. We were scruffy. Deliberately scruffy. The scruffier the better. DMs and a canvas army-surplus rucksack with band logos biroed all over it were de rigeur though.
Having said that I did once own a black velvet jacket and – eek – a leather waistcoat and heavily-buckled biker boots combo. The former was a sixth form attempt to be a casually-Gitaned philosophe, the latter a brief 14 year old response to a Kerrang poster of Dave Mustaine. Who the hell wants to look like Dave Mustaine? Not even Dave Mustaine.
Possibly Charlie Dimmock.
stripes and spots?
Cruiser arriviste?
I had a lamentable period at school, just before 6th form, where the trend was suede head lite – brogues (with segs on the heels), red socks or fluorescent green, budgie jacket (me) or Harrington (most people). Brutus shirt with penny rounds. No idea why, I hated suede heads and skinheads even more. Thankfully no pictures exist and soon I discovered my inner hippy.
I had a brief flirtation with leg warmers circa 1980. On account of resembling a stick insect at the time (I’d give anything for that now), I couldn’t get them to stay on. That, and that fact that I looked like a complete twat, meant that it was a brief, never to be repeated, look.
I also grew my hair very long when in my early 30s. Another move that didn’t appear to have the ladies queueing up.