We may cringe at our wardrobes from 1982, a year in which lace gloves, legwarmers, and stonewashed denim featured heavily, but Eighties fashion is back in vogue.

With a new series of Ashes To Ashes back on television, we go back to the Eighties to find out who were those heroes of yesteryear and what they remember about those multicoloured days.

TOYAH WILLCOX

Fashion icon of the time was Toyah Willcox, 50, named Best British Singer at the Rock and Pop Awards (now the Brits). She says:

Back In 1982, I was recognised everywhere I went - I had the big, pink hair, and I dressed the part in black PVC boots and little dresses. My nightmare would have been to have been seen without full make-up.

Post-punk was moving into New Wave and New Romanticism, you lived the dream and wore the uniform every day, that was part of the movement. My schedule was exhausting.

When we shot the award-winning Brave New World video, in which I wore black contact lenses (wearing different coloured contact lenses was very 'in' in 1982) I was up at 2am in make-up, then posing on a freezing beach in Hastings at 4am.

I was then driven into London where I was shot riding a horse at Battersea power station until four in the afternoon. Then we filmed through the night at Wandsworth studio - and I had a concert the next day.

For me, 1982 was a year that empowered women. I loved the fashion - at last British women ditched all those boring Laura Ashley prints.

Huge shoulder pads were in, thanks to Joan Collins in Dynasty, and London was the hippest place to be, thanks to designers such as Vivienne Westwood and Katharine Hamnett.

Perhaps my most spectacular stage outfit was the one I wore to sing Thunder In The Mountains on Top Of The Pops.

I had 2ft-high hair in the shape of a sunflower, thigh-length black PVC boots and a black suede cavewoman dress. For one shoot, when I had almost vertical pink hair, it took me 12 hours to get ready. In that year, you felt you could wear anything, the sky was the limit.

Make-up was also outrageous - I went through a period of wearing cubist designs on my face. Boys and girls dressed alike - men looked like peacocks in their make-up and over-sized shirts.

In terms of politics, Margaret Thatcher typified the 'can-do' role of women, though I didn't agree with her policies. It was an important year for women, as we were starting to be taken seriously in our own right.

Daily Mail
April 2009