Observation of Fashion Parallels.

New Wave, sampling, Hip Hop, graffiti, world music, MTV... these are some of the catalysts which yielded such interesting avant garde and asymmetrical fashions of the 80s.  If you take a close look around you - on the catwalk, in magazines - many of those 80s trends appeal still today.   Particularly via blazers and wingtip/brogue/oxford shoes, menswear for women has enjoyed a resurgence for a good while now.  Also stemming from the 80s are still-percolating vintage, goth, and steampunk trends.

These are things I discuss in my 80s Fashion Design Book 1: Drawn - available at Etsy.  An excerpt:

Toile La La collage featuring late 80s magazine tearsheet. 80s Fashion Design Book 1: Drawn.

This image appears on page 34 of the 77-page zine, and on page 23 of the 120-page book.  The book includes much more commentary via endnotes - as well as inspiration lists, whereas the zine leans toward the visual - with larger images and much less text.

"Pre-Vintage:  Before widespread enthusiasm for vintage... this was an image - marked Tim Jenkins - cut from a magazine and glued into my small, black late 80s/early 90s sketch/scrapbook.  For me, it signals the advent or cusp of America's fascination with vintage finds.  The ensemble seems simultaneously goth and flapper-esque, not quite steampunk.  Her backpack/purse is the touch of youth and modernity.  I like how she is running about in her fringe and hat and long, knotted strand of beads on a muddy, blustery, grey day. 

Thrift or vintage dressing... didn't really catch on until the late 80s.  Vintage and recycled clothing became popular, trendy, closer to the 90s.... .

The ideas behind many of the clothes we wore in the 80s were not new - but the clothes were.  Here though, the vintage look seems authentic, giving this image an uncommon quality or sense of otherness.  It's a thought-out, not thrown-on, ensemble... the dark bits from history with a speck-of-color bow."