Fashion: A look back in style: Philip Sallon predicted the next fashion revival would be the Eighties, and threw a party to celebrate. Tamsin Blanchard was there
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Your support makes all the difference.The Mud Club was the first place to recreate the Seventies, Philip Sallon says of the club he created in 1983. 'But the Eighties are a nightmare to recreate.' Nevertheless, last weekend he tried. On Saturday night, in Bagley's studio at King's Cross, north London, the seeds of the revival were sown at the Good Riddance Diana 1980s Ball. A 30ft-high white Chanel handbag - the most potent image of the Eighties alongside Wham], according to Sallon - was built; the handbag room was devoted to Club Tropicana; and another room was hung with pictures of Margaret Thatcher (never before has she been so hip).
Apart from a few Adam Ants, a Princess of Wales on her wedding night and three ra-ra girls dancing around the handbag, most revellers chose to ignore the Eighties theme or missed the point. But in the Sallon world, dressing-up has not died out. 'Just build up some really high shoulder pads,' he advised when I asked what I should wear for the night.
So will the Eighties be fashion's next revival? Certainly, Vogue fashion editors are forsaking flat shoes and Seventies platforms for spiky stilettos. Short skirts are back, and the ra-ra could be next. Shoulder pads are on the rise. When an Eighties revival does happen, it will be a mixture of New Romantic and Adam Ant. There will be sequin boob tubes, pink and grey hair extensions, make-up and lots of frills.
As Sallon says, there is no period in history that has not been revived. But this will be just a fashion trend: even he would not inflict the decade's music on us. 'I didn't want to clear the dance floor,' said. Sallon. His next night? The Naughty Nineties - 1890s, that is.
(Photographs omitted)
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