In the 1980s, fashion wanted to make a statement, and it found its perfect chronicler in the legendary British fashion photographer David Bailey. After Bailey helped shape the style of the Swinging Sixties, the fashion of the Eighties presented a whole new challenge: brighter colors, even more glamour, tall models, extreme makeup, spandex, lycra, jumpsuits, power dressing, big hair, and, as Grace Coddington puts it in the foreword, “jackets with huge shoulder pads worn over the shortest miniskirts and dangerously high shoes.”

Eighties gathers Bailey’s iconic fashion photographs from the pages of Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris, Tatler, and many others. Featuring images of couture, runway, and prêt-à-porter collections from the decade’s groundbreaking designers, including Azzedine Alaïa, Comme des Garçons, Guy Laroche, Missoni, Stephen Jones, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent, the book is a testament to a decade that broke down taste hierarchies to bring fun and sex back into fashion, reminding us that neither is indecent. Here, jewelry sparkles, silk shimmers, and suit fabric rustles. Playful, invincible, and provocative, the most beautiful among the beautiful are showcased, including 1980s icons like Catherine Bailey, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Catherine Deneuve, Princess Diana, Jerry Hall, Marie Helvin, Grace Jones, Kelly LeBrock, Christy Turlington, Tina Turner, and many more.
The cultural echoes of the 1980s, present on our screens, runways, and concert stages, make today’s time especially suited to recontextualize the lasting legacy of maximalism and excess. Eighties uniquely enables this with David Bailey as a winking guide and interpreter. As he says in his foreword: “The Eighties have proven to be magical.” Here, that magic comes alive.