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I wasn't in high school in the 80s, but did hit middle school before the decade was over, and hair was very much like this, even in middle school.
Personally, I had very long hair (down to my bottom) and I had a spiral perm and big bangs for a couple years around 7th/8th grade. I also frequently wore leggings under a miniskirt. It was the look.
So the majority of these hairstyles look a lot like my middle school yearbooks. As someone else mentioned, the day-to-day looks were more subdued.
Back in the early 1980s I recall the mohawk phase and my now bald buddy endless blow drying and spraying his hair so the t-tops in his car would not blow over his hairstyle
Dudes used "Dippity Do" to cement those styles into place lol!
By the late 80s, I was into the more "Flock of Seaguls" style of hair, sort of a "reverse mullet" where my hair was shaved around the edges and in back, but very long on top. The front, if not combed, came down to my mouth. For work, I would use Dippity Do and comb it back, so it was out of my face.
I was alive for almost the entire decade of the 80s, and it sometimes bothers me how today's retro-80s trend gets exaggerated or misinterpreted... having said that, those pictures are exactly how I remember the mid-late 80s (in Southern California). My classmates, their parents, or the news anchors on TV, moussed their hair to oblivion.
Yes, the styles do get exaggerated today when people try to recreate an 80s look. For guys, we mostly just wore Levis (worn until they were extremely faded and sometimes ripped) with surfer t-shirts and Vans. It wasn't that bad.
Back in the early 1980s I recall the mohawk phase and my now bald buddy endless blow drying and spraying his hair so the t-tops in his car would not blow over his hairstyle
Hat, I dated a guy with T-tops on his Trans Am. I didn't have big hair or acid wash at that point, though.
Dudes used "Dippity Do" to cement those styles into place lol!
By the late 80s, I was into the more "Flock of Seaguls" style of hair, sort of a "reverse mullet" where my hair was shaved around the edges and in back, but very long on top. The front, if not combed, came down to my mouth. For work, I would use Dippity Do and comb it back, so it was out of my face.
Yeah, more New Wave than hair band. People forget there were different looks going on in the 80s, as with any decade. As a girl who grew into a teen in the 80s, the Cyndi Lauper, candy-colored hair Village-chic look was different than the mopey, Morrisey/Smiths fangirl look, which was different from the Tawny Kitaen , moussed mane while writhing on the hood of a car look.
Then there were preppies with popped collars, cuffed Guess and Esprit jeans, white Keds with no laces, Sperry topsiders...
I had a pretty good spiral perm in the 80s, but I refused the tall bangs. I just could not commit to all the hairspray required to keep that hair so high. LOL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lacerta
Personally, I had very long hair (down to my bottom) and I had a spiral perm and big bangs for a couple years around 7th/8th grade. I also frequently wore leggings under a miniskirt. It was the look.
I remember that the spiral perm was popular in the fall of 1989. So many of the girls at my school had one (with the tall bangs of course LOL). And so many people (males and females) wore Z Cavaricci pants that year, myself included. Ugh!
My freshman year of college roommate was really into Z Cavaricci, and that was 1995. She was pretty small town Midwest, though (as was I). Trends tended to hit us on a second or third wave, particularly trends involving specific brands, because in the days before online retail, there weren't very many, if any local retailers that carried brand-name attire, apart from utilitarian, Levi Strauss, Timberland, Carhartt-type brands. To get anything remotely "fashion" involved a minimum two-hour drive to malls in the Chicago suburbs. Locally, Farm & Fleet was about what there was.
But no matter how far we were from clothing retailers, just about anybody could pick up cans of mousse and Aqua Net.
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