Thursday, January 24, 2008

Long Live the 80's



So we fashionable Segullah chics had an 80's party. I thought you might like to see my get-up. Roger, who, like his wife, left his fashion sense behind once we hit 1990, looked at me in my design and said, "Why don't you dress like that more often?"

Please especially note the legwarmers (a sweater in the D.I. pile gave its sleeves for me that day) and the big bow (my hair was not long enough for the banana clip that I have religiously saved since 1985). I tried to get the bangs-to-heaven, but not sure I succeeded.


That's me singing Thompson Twins's "Hold Me Now." I discovered, as I tried to match the melody line to earn points in this game, that in the 80's I always sang harmony, not melody. I'm really good at the back-up singer's part on every song. Here, I'm trying not to sing (falsetto), "In yer lovin' arrrrms . . . Oh, my poor and tired hearrrrt . . . why don't you stay with me?" etc.

During the 80's, I worked at the coolest place to work in the 80's, the 49th Street Galleria. I remember watching a couple come in once who were obviously stuck in the 70's. I wrinkled my nose and thought to myself, "That will never happen to me." And now it has. I make my little efforts to dress at least in the last decade, but I know I am failing miserably because I have no idea whether I'm passing or not, nor what I should change to look more modern. (Is it too late to try growing out my bangs again, or are we back to bangs?) I only know that everything in the stores is ugly to me. So I must be way, way out.

Other than being stuck in the 80's fashion-wise, I wonder whether I look my age. What do you think? In these pictures, you can't see the wrinkles around my eyes or the gray roots in my hair. I almost look like I'm still eighteen, right? (I'm going on thirty-eight. I guess that's a good excuse for not knowing how to wear my hair these days. But I still feel too young for the "abandon all hope and get an old-lady haircut" stage.)

4 comments:

Marj said...

I was watching a show last night that showed some teens in the 80's and even though I did (and still do) think the 80's were awesome, they still looked weird to me but isn't it weird how it didn't seem weird at the time. I didn't realize that our hair was so big until I look back and see pictures. And I remember just loving some of the clothes I wore. I wonder what I will think of now 20 years from now.

The 49th Street Galleria ... such memories.

Anonymous said...

Didn't you work at Orange Julius in the Galleria? Ah, the good old days-

Those pics remind me a lot of how you looked when I met you, which was '91, I believe. At least the hair, anyway. I don't remember what you wore, except the day I mistook your lovely floral pajamas for a matched pants-and-shirt set.

Jane said...

LOVE IT!!! Sounds like a great time!

Darlene said...

Yeah, I miss those jammies.

Yeah, it was Orange Julius, for part of the time, at least. (Which was the nerdiest place to work at the coolest place to work. Long live brown polyester!) You have a good memory, Dave.

I loved some of those clothes, too, Marj. Remember our wonder-twin shirts? They weren't too bad.