From Sade to Siouxsie Sioux: 15 Music Goddesses to Make You Reconsider ’80s Style
Photo: (from left) David Montgomery / Getty Images; Ebet Roberts / Redferns; Everett Pictures1/14
Photo: David Montgomery / Getty Images2/14WHO: Sade
HER STORY: Fashion’s loss was music’s gain. The Central Saint Martins–trained Anglo-Nigerian singer Sade was modeling and designing her own line of menswear before she devoted herself full-time to music. She found instant success with 1984’s Diamond Life with her incomparable voice and stunning looks. “Dwelling on her beauty is not really sexist,” rationalized one journalist in 1985. “You can’t really write about Sade and ignore it.” Like her sound, Sade’s look was unique. Her minimalism—sleek hair, big hoops, turtleneck, bolero—was especially striking in an era when garish was the norm.
THE LOOK: Flawless
Photo: Barry King / WireImages3/14WHO: Annie Lennox
HER STORY: With her shaved and dyed head (à la Ziggy Stardust) and sharp suits, Annie Lennox became, as one journalist put it, “the first queen of the androgynous generation (unless you count Boy George).” This soulful Scot worked the bellboy look eons before it appeared in The Grand Budapest Hotel, on Pharrell, and at Gucci, and her accessories of choice were New Wave hats, fetish-y leather gloves, Wayfarers, and the occasional mask. Was it a game of dress-up or something more? Two years after performing in Elvis drag at the 1984 Grammys, Lennox claimed she “wasn’t particularly concerned with bending genders. I simply wanted to get away from wearing cutesy-pie miniskirts and tacky cutaway push-ups. . . . Nobody said, ‘God, Marlene Dietrich must be a lesbian.’ I love wearing trousers.” Yet the singer has also explained that her suits were the visual expression of the Eurythmics’s status as equals, an expression that “I’m as good as a man, I’m as strong as a man.” The bottom line? She became a new type of sex symbol for the ’80s.
THE LOOK: Dominant, tailored
Photo: Mark Weiss / Getty Images4/14WHO: Joan Jett
HER STORY: “Cool and dangerous” is how Joan Jett has described rock ’n’ roll, but the same can be said of her look: signature shag, tattoos, and leather. Jett, who wore Saint Laurent when she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, looks, she once said, like a “bikerhead.” It’s possible to see Jett’s androgyny as a form of defense and a way of being taken seriously: She got her start in ’70s all-girl band The Runaways, who were often regarded as “teenage jailbait” and rock ’n’ roll Lolitas.
THE LOOK: Black leather
Photo: Peter Still / Redferns5/14WHO: Tina Turner
HER STORY: “Onstage Tina Turner will always be glamorous,” the lion-maned singer declared in 1985, the year of her triumphant comeback. Out with Ike and the Ikettes were the shift dresses and the bouffant that marked ’60s-era Turner. In their place were high heels, thigh-high minis, and fishnets. All practical considerations, according to Turner, who told Rolling Stone that regular hose ran and leather doesn’t show dirt. Yet she could not have been unaware of the message they sent, which had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with her newfound confidence, strength, and enduring sex appeal.
THE LOOK: Fierce
