American Decades
Clothing for Youth
Rebel Clothes—Street Fashion.
The 1980s saw the mainstreaming of fashion from the street, that is, the gradual permeation of adult chic by youthful rage. The evolution began in the 1970s with the breakdown of the traditional divisions of fashion. It continued into the 1980s as high-end designers and wealthy pop stars appropriated street fashion, thereby defeating the style's original purpose: inexpensive, functional clothing. Whether Americanized punk, urban rap, or Madonnaesque sleazy, these styles made a lasting mark on the way Americans dressed; street fashion became high fashion. Oversized clothing, worn jeans, T-shirts, leather, and multiple ear piercings, once limited to youth, were in the mainstream of adult fashion by the end of the decade. Women with ripped jeans or gel-spiked hair, combined with the more elegant yuppie style of a blazer and Chanel bag—or other such combinations—represented the merging of the...
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1980's Fashion
