Here's our Kev (Michael Le Vell) displaying a few popular 1980s fashions. Glorious decade, this one. Flared trousers, so cool and cutting edge in the late 1960s, had stagnated in the 1970s. In the late 1970s a 1950s drainpipe trouser revival began, and in the 1980s some jeans and trouser legs became so narrow, you could hardly get your feet through! Kev adored tight jeans.Hair was a crowning glory or another story in the 1980s. The emergence of hair gel and mousse led men and women to play evil games with their hair. Kev went for the meringue "New Romantic" look, then the infamous '80s bouffant mullet.
The 1960s saw men becoming hairier with beards and big 'taches as the hippie years swung. The '70s and '80s gradually reversed the trend. Our Kev, like many '80s men, was proud of his 'tache - leading, of course to comparisons with Hall & Oates. Steph Barnes finally shaved it off in the early 1990s!
All in all, our Kev dealt with the 1980s pretty well. He avoided the Miami Vice look (pastel coloured shoulder-padded linen jackets with pushed up sleeves and blonde streaked hair), deeley boppers and shell suits, and was declared highly fancieable by my cousin Sue.
Mind you, my cousin Sue also fancied Jon Bon Jovi back then and positively drooled over the Page 7 fellas in The Sun...
Page 7 glories of 1985!
3 comments:
I know Michael le Vell is absolutely straight, but there is no doubt that back in the day he bore a startling resemblance to 1980s gay porn star Jon King!
Michael's a really nice bloke, I've met him a couple of times and he is, as I say, 100% straight. But back in the '80s he was a bit of a dish - and I really enjoyed his appearances!
Love, Miss Lash xx
PS - I love your page 7 guy as well!
Oh the big hair and the taches!! The blondes with the dark eyebrows penciled in and the huge shoulderpads! Rita sported them for years!
I remember in the early 1980s there was a huge youth trend for donkey jackets. I have some newspaper advertisements for fashion shops in 1983 and they were everywhere! We were all dressing up like dustmen - girls as well as boys.
Later in the '80s, unlike Kev, I fell hook, line and sinker for the Miami Vice look! I really liked it. I come from a working class family and before the '80s it wasn't the "done thing" for men to really bother much with their appearance.
I was the first man in my family EVER to own a hair drier - which I bought circa 1984!
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