I'm quoting
@Nudistpig here because his response was embedded when he quoted my earlier post: "You were so enthusiastic and happy and my eulogy at first was reflecting the way Karl treated some of my designer friends and models while at Chanel, and his well publicized quotas on Black models in fashion (he was not the only one behind it) were first on my mind, and I realized you would probably want to know about the inner workings of the house because it is no less and maybe more interesting and Karl did make great contributions there. Ahh the days of the fashion pattern that was a big market in the US...1980 was a heady time for fashion."
Indeed the 1980s were quite the times for a number of fashion looks. Some of my best memories include:
Shoulder pads. The nighttime soap "Dynasty" seemed to put them on the map. Joan Collins and Linda Evans rocked some serious shoulder pads in their couture daytime and evening TV clothes. And, the beauty pageant runways were rampant with shoulder pads. Very seldom would you see a natural shoulder line. I remember putting together 2 or 3 different pairs of pads to make the *ultimate* in shoulder pads. It was all about the shoulder construction, lol. There were times shoulder pads were used as bust pads. As butt pads. Shoulder pads were everywhere!
Bows and more bows. Yves St. Laurent comes to my mind. Nothing like a good power suit with that gorgeous silk charmeuse jacquard high neck blouse adored with the long tie one fashioned into their "neck" bow. Usually tied asymmetrically. It was a look that had quite the number of followers. Customers would question me why they needed more fabric than a normal long-sleeved blouse. Because you need to cut the bow on the bias! That was the *secret*.
Prints. Silk prints from Italian and Swiss mills. Yummy to look at and the feel was so scrumptious. Usually paired with a solidish Chanel-type tweed. Then Emmanuel Ungaro came along and we started seeing prints and patterns mixed into the same garment. I had one customer who regularly brought me her Ungaro magazine clippings and we would recreate the look, again for pennies on the dollar compared to the cost for the real designer outfit.
Buttons. Buttons became part of fashion design rather than just another way to secure a garment. I had customers who would have me design garments around a particular set of buttons. I had one specific customer who bought St. Johns knitwear. Pricey. It was nothing for her to bring me two or three new purchases and walk out with $300 or $400 worth of replacement buttons for her new knits. We starting offering her store credit for the buttons she was discarding because they were actually quite nice, but, evidently for her, not nice enough! Win win.
One of my favorite times working in the fabric store was when the salesmen would stop by with their sample cases. We'd spend hours going through all the buttons and look at swatches of literally hundreds of different fabric iterations. Checking existing stock to see if it might coordinate with something we had; or coordinating between salesmen to get that unique one-of-a-kind look a lot of our customers seemed to crave.
Yeah, the '80s were indeed a heady time in fashion. For sure!