Top 10 80’s Fashion Accessories – Hair, Hands, Feet

In every decade music and musicians dictated fashion to a large extent, and accessories were a bit part of the fashion, often being easy to remove and become ‘normal’ again. Hair was one exception, and only the committed took the plunge, but hands and feet were liberally decorated with the youth’s “badges of courage” and display of alignment with the music and fashion of the day. For some, the 80’s were a great time. The creation of MTV revolutionized fashion, bringing the radical new fashions into everyone’s living rooms. For others, it was nothing but bad hair, worse clothing and music that often had more to do with machines than talent. We take a look at the former approach and relish the excess and outrageous fashions that the 80s managed to make mainstream. We didn’t accessorise – we “excessorised” and loved it. We attracted attention with totally over the top bits and bobs.
Hair hands and feet decorations were vitally important as part of the uniform and depended on one’s leaning towards either the Punk or New Romantic end of the spectrum. Here we list some of the popular trends of the day:

Hair
Women
• Scrunchies
• Lots of gel
• Banana Clips
• Pineapple Clips
• Multi-coloured and/or platinum blonde
• Coloured feathers in hair
• Crimped/ultra-teased
• Side pony tails
• Glitter
• Hair mascara

Men
• Mohicans or long and layered
• Rainbow colours
• Frizzy/slightly teased/curly

Hands
• Many Swatches (a popular large gaudy watch)
• Swatch Protectors (to protect one’s investment)
• Plastic Charms (the cheaper the better – pixies etc or anything really)
• Hoop Earrings (made of different metals, woods and plastic)
• Beads (bright colours made of wood or plastic, and more than one string)
• Slap Bracelets
• Rubber Bracelets
• Rhinestone/Studded Gloves (to continue the theme of studs in the face and other parts of the body
• Fingerless Gloves (one of the stranger fashions made of leather or PVC)
•
Feet
• Doc Marten shoes and boots with Grolsch bottle tops attached to laces
• Army Boots
• Leather Sandals
• Jelly Shoes
• Roller Skates
• Leg Warmers
• High Top Sneakers
• Neon Socks

It would be difficult to choose a top 10 as the whole point was that anything goes with anything and one should express individualism and demonstrate anti-establishment tendencies. When done properly, the whole look was ridiculous, which was the point, and the choosing of one look or one accessory over another would fly in the face of the anti-establishment ethos of the era.