Shoulder pads, synthesisers and big hair... why it's the '80s all over again

While the City fell under the control of a new breed of champagne-drinking yuppies, the rest of us had to make do with the Berni Inn, Angel Delight and Crispy Pancakes. We wore snow-washed denim, pedal pushers and puffballs. No one, bar perhaps Madonna, ever looked good in the 1980s.

However, time is a great healer and 25 years or so since the last snood was sold, the decade most were happy to see consigned to history is on the verge of a comeback.

The first signs of an '80s revival were seen last year. Shoulder pads returned to the catwalk, leg warmers enjoyed a renaissance and even the Kevin Keegan perm briefly came back into fashion.

Pop acts like Little Boots and La Roux dominated mainstream music, finding an audience who were too young to remember synthesisers and big hair the first time around. Both wore their '80s influences proudly on their sleeve and now the revival is spreading from the world of music and fashion to film and television.

A quick glance at the list of forthcoming releases shows just how tight the '80s grip on the cinema is about to become.

Sequels to Tron and that defining, dark satire of the 1980s Wall Street are due out by the end of the year. A film version of The A-Team looks set to be the blockbuster of the summer, and remakes of Footloose and The Karate Kid are also in the pipeline.

On the small screen, with Ashes to Ashes continuing to prove a ratings winner for the BBC, Channel 4 is about to get in on the act. The broadcaster has commissioned a four-part drama picking up where Shane Meadow's '80s inspired film This is England left off and it has also helped fund a new film about Bradford's Andrea Dunbar whose play Rita, Sue and Bob Too, was one of the decade's cult hits.

But what exactly is driving this cultural revival? Professor Duncan Petrie from the department of theatre, film and television at the University of York, believes a number of factors are at work.

"The powerful people in the cultural industries and the media are always nostalgic for their own youth," he says. "The studio executives who commissioned these films were teenagers in the 1980s and it's natural they want to remake the kind of films they remember fondly. Something like Footloose was what we call a great date movie, and now they're trying to make the format work for a young audience today.

"Also, Hollywood responds to whatever else is happening in culture at any given time. If music and fashion is '80s inspired, then the big studios also want a slice of it."

The '80s are often described as a decade of greed. Given the recent backlash against bankers' bonuses and politicians' expenses, its guiding principles should now seem horribly flawed. However, Prof

Petrie believes the period's driving ambition continues to strike a chord.

"Money and greed are always recurring themes in entertainment and a Wall Street sequel has an obvious appeal," he says. "We all hate bankers again so it's about capturing the zeitgeist.

"Some '80s films were also very escapist. They were fuelled by an optimistic sense of, 'You can get out there and do it', and that

probably appeals to young people at the moment.

"The '80s was a period of political unsettlement, but it was also a decade of big change, with a shift towards consumerism. Perhaps the appeal for today's audience is to get beyond the current malaise and back to a time where things seemed to be moving forward.

"But the fact is these films are being made because Hollywood thinks they're going to make money.

"Culture is always recycled and if something has been popular in the past, someone at some point will decide to bring it back in the hope it will be popular again."

With the '80s film revival underway, the music revival is also about to get into full swing.

Leeds recently saw an appearance by Delphic, tipped to be one of this year's bright new things and hailed by critics as a modern-day New Order. Supporting them were Mirrors, a Tears For Fears-esque outfit who look like they have been teleported into the modern day from a moody club, circa 1982.

Not to be outdone, Yorkshire has its own wave of 80s-inspired outfits. In Leeds, where Little Boots began her music career as a student, it is the sonically and visually stylish Heads We Dance who have been making a splash, heavily influenced by acts from The Pet Shop Boys to Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk.

"We're not an '80s tribute act," says lead singer Pete Coppinger. "But we really like that period because of the sense of adventure and experimentation, particularly with technology.

"There was a lot of colour and imagination with bands from that time, and I think there's a real public appetite for that now.

"For quite a few years we had this deluge of guitar bands, it was quite male-dominated, and I think people are looking for something different. They want pop with elaborate outfits, with a sense of wonder – and

the '80s had a real sense of futurism and fantasy.

"Escapism is a massive part of the appeal, but it's also that this kind of music feels more relevant to young people now – who have been

brought up with R&B, hip-hop and dance. It incorporates all these

different styles."

Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised that the '80s fads and fashions are once again knocking on the door. As Prof David Hesmondhalgh, a cultural industries expert at the University of Leeds, points out – revivals have been a recurring trend since the Second World War.

"People tend to forget that in the '70s there was a '50s revival, with films like American Graffiti and Grease, and punk being heavily influenced by the Teddy Boys," he says. "Then there was a '60s revival in the '80s – around funk, soul and jazz.

"You could argue there's a two-decade pattern with revivals. They're always a simplified and slightly distorted view of a decade, driven by television images.

"It's people looking back for inspiration. History is a source of ideas for people making music, fashion and films. But you can't just follow-on from the previous decade. What you can do us go back just far enough so that it seems slightly outrageous.

"There will absolutely be a '90s revival before long. It would be astounding if that didn't happen."