1988 - Wicked! Gel 'N' Mousse, Designer Stubble, Ripped Jeans, Party People And Boxer Shorts...

Let's take a look elsewhere... Ah, here's Blue Jeans, April 1988. Imagine coming across this girly in an English country garden - or anywhere!! She looks mighty daft by today's standards. In 1988, she looked pretty OK.

More from Blue Jeans - and Star Trek - The Next Generation is available on video. And then there's 30 things you didn't know about Curiosity Killed The Cat. What are you waiting for?

Ooh, those clothes! As I recall, they were very much of the era, and would not have looked at all out of place, but nowadays those girlies would be far more likely to be laughed off the rink because of their clothes than for any lack of skating skills. Mind you, maybe not. I've seen a lot of '80s gear in the last ten years or so worn by the young and the trendy: foul ra ra skirt and black leggings combinations, lovely jackets with pushed up or turned back sleeves (the turned back sleeves having the inner striped or other patterned material), permed and scrunched hair, bulldog clips, blonde streaks/highlights, shutter shades, jelly shoes, colourful trainers, wonderful clothing colour schemes - and more... 

Makes me feel old to see it back again.

A glimpse of two fabulous Blue Jeans photo stories - one of them called I Should Be So Lucky. There's novel.

I loved the droll irony contained within '80s teen mags, probably started by Smash Hits earlier in the decade. There's a fine example in this 1988 Blue Jeans reader's letter and editor's reply featured on the page above:

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In Carly Simon's song "Coming Around Again" what is Mummy doing when Daddy "breezes in" and also why did the baby sneeze?

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Curious BJ Fan, Bucks.

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"Baby sneezes, Mommy PLEASES, Daddy breezes in." I've really no idea why the baby sneezes, perhaps it was sitting in a draught or it had just had a very cold drink of Pepsi or it had been for a brisk walk in the bracing air. Just use your imagination. Please!

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Magic. And don't miss Freeda The Frog declaring her undying love for Gordon the Gopher.

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"Bright and cheery" nail varnishes tested by Blue Jeans...

Kylie squashed a 1988 silly season rumour: word was floating around that if you played her records at 33 RPM (vinyl was still pretty "in" in 1988, as were cassettes, CD players cost a packet) it revealed that Rick Astley was actually singing, not Kylie. SCANDAL! Not true, said tongue-in-cheek Kylie, SHE was actually the singer on her own AND Rick Astley's records.

And here IS Rick. What's to look forward to in the next 1988 edition of Blue Jeans? A feature on stars in suits? Hands To Heaven Breathe? A Phillip Schofield pin-up? Oh come on. Is this a joke? Have I been sold a spoof mag?

No?

Flamin' Nora...

I liked Sinitta's camp, hi-N-R-G pop. Here she is (with her toyboy?), revealing that sometimes he's a trendy boxer shorts man. What was all this with boxer shorts? Well, for years, medics had been fussing over we men's personal bits, claiming that they got a little too overcrowded and overheated in briefs and Y-fronts and that they really weren't good for our fertility.

Underwear had become very brief in the 1960s, but in the mid-to-late 1980s, made acceptable by the likes of Nick Kamen, boxers were on the rise again. A healthier, "stylish" alternative. Yes, probably, as regards the former, but as regards the latter - PURLEASE!! Compare this 1988 trend with skimpy 1982 - here.

Nick Berry - a Blue Jeans pin up in 1988, complete with designer stubble.

Were these "trusty 501's" ready for the dustbin? Are you kidding?

The label on that top recommended hand washing in luke warm water with Dreft. But would the girly listen? Would she heck - she was too busy moussing her hair up.

My mother was a "child of the '60s" and sported a huge beehive hairdo back then which took about eighteen cans of hair spray to create. Even in the 1970s, she would gas us with hair spray fumes, creating a more modest hair style, before going to the local Labour Club for bingo on Friday and Saturday nights.

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In the 1980s, as concern for the ozone layer took hold, we youngsters gleefully grasped hold of new kind-to-ozone products like hair gel and mousse so that we could perform evil experiments on our own crowning glories.

Lovely.

Stars out and about in July 1988 - from the News of the World Sunday Magazine. Prince Charles shows off his chest, "Loadsamoney" Harry Enfield does his Stavros bit, being all caring and sharing over a kebab, Samantha Fox hitches a ride with Simon Climie of Climie Fisher and Ben Vol-au-Vent (as we always called him) of Curiosity Killed The Cat wears weird footwear with band mate Migi.

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Meanwhile, Linda Gray takes a break from Sue Ellen, Jim Davidson's still about, and Arnold Schwarzeneggar takes a stroll with Danny DeVito.

In youth terminology, "wicked" was suddenly a very excellent thing to be. But what was "gnarly"?

Er...

"Tubular"?

Double er... 

By 1988 I was getting a mite raddled, and wasn't as "with it" as I once had been... Oh for the days of Toto Coelo!

Designer Stubble

FACTORY BOYS BRISTLE OVER STUBBLE BAN,

From the Sun, October 4, 1986.

Workers were bristling yesterday over their bosses' ban... on trendy stubble beards.

The firm's younger fellas - who copy Wham! star George Michael's hairy style - have had to take the decision on the chin.

Some have been handed razors or sent home when they arrived at the Goodson lampshade factory in Hixon, Stafford.

Management claim five-o-clock shadows give a bad impression to visitors from customers like Marks and Spencer.

Managing director Phillip Goodson said yesterday: "We have high standards. It's disrespectful."

Some of the lads called in their factory inspector to see if the razor ruling was legal.

But they were told management was entitled to expect workers to look smart.

One employee, who did not want to be named, complained: "You can still look smart with a bit of shadow. It's trendy."

It was, in fact, very trendy indeed to look slightly unshaven in the mid-to-late 1980s. This look came to be known as "designer stubble" and was actually a cultivated style designed to make the stubbled-one look wonderfully macho. It was a look that was popularised by George Michael in Wham and Don Johnson in Miami Vice. I tried it, but ended up looking like a seedy villain.

My mate Steve tried it, and looked absolutely great (or so he said), but he came unstuck at work at Sainsbury's. Dazzling all the housewives as a front-of-house check-out operator, Steve was one day spotted by the evil store manager, who took him straight off the till and sent him to work in the store's warehouse for the rest of the day. That was the end of Steve's stubbled phase. Humping boxes and crates around simply was not his style.

20th Century Words by John Ayto, describes designer stubble thus:

noun (1987): a short bristly growth of stubble on a man's unshaven face, worn for a carefully groomed yet rugged and masculine appearance...

The book quotes a Guardian article from 1989:

Designer stubble of the George Michael ilk has also run its bristly course.

Shame!

Mind you, it's back in fashion now!