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Surely, I found myself wondering as I watched the 46th off-the- shoulder batwing jersey top sashay down the catwalk last week, it is supposed to be the new, young, edgy designers who challenge the status quo, throw fresh ideas into the mix. So why are these the very designers belting their little hearts out as one from the Now That's What I Call the 80s songbook, leaving it to the older kids on the block to cheer us up with something that we could reasonably wear for spring/summer 2001, rather than for a Duran Duran concert?
It's not hard to see why the 80s are so fascinating for a designer trying to make a statement and make their name. A dalliance with the uncomfortable, with the boundaries of taste and the definition of beauty, is central to cutting-edge fashion. This is what 80s revivalism is all about: the style of the decade is still too close, too embarrassing, to make comfortable viewing, which is what makes it abrasive and difficult. The trouble with multiple variations on the theme, however, is that the shock value fades, while the ugliness remains.
But if too many collections were scented with the era of Poison and Giorgio Beverly Hills, there were also some very good ones. Markus Lupfer and Marcus Constable infused their collections with a clarity of vision that shone through in the colours, the tailoring, even in the way the models walked - somehow a designer's clarity of thought shines through in the catwalk presence of the models. Lupfer showed his skill with skirts of harlequin-patterned feathers and of ribboned...