The 80s were loud and excessive. The economy was booming, MTV had just launched, and men were dressing like they had somewhere to be and wanted everyone to know about it.
But buried underneath all the shoulder pads and neon was a handful of men who took the decade’s energy and did something genuinely stylish with it. Not every look from this era aged well, most of them did not, but these eight wore the 80s better than anyone else and a few of them are still being referenced today.
Here are the best dressed men of the decade.
The pastel suit. The blue tee underneath. One of the most copied looks of the decade.
Don Johnson
Don Johnson as Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice did something that should not have worked as well as it did. Pastel linen blazers, worn over a plain white tee, with lightweight trousers and sockless loafers. In 1984 that combination redefined what a man in a suit could look like. It was relaxed and sharp at the same time, which the decade was generally not good at. Giorgio Armani dressed the show and the collaboration produced what became known as the Italian look, an approach to tailoring that filtered from the screen into real wardrobes globally. The sockless thing alone set off a trend that lasted years.
The red leather jacket. The gloves. The most watched music video in history helped.
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson in the 80s is one of the most referenced wardrobes in the history of popular culture and the remarkable thing is that most of it still holds up. Military-style jackets with gold epaulettes, worn with high-waisted black trousers and loafers. The single white glove on the right hand. The red leather Thriller jacket, designed by John Landis’ costume team, which became arguably the most iconic jacket of the decade. He wore it with the confidence of someone who had no interest in whether you understood it. Most people eventually did.
The Let’s Dance era. Bowie cleaned up and somehow became even more interesting.
David Bowie
Bowie in the early 80s made a deliberate move away from the theatrical alien personas of the 70s and toward something cleaner and more grown up. The Let’s Dance period, 1983 onwards, gave us a Bowie in sharp, well-cut suits, slicked back hair, a more conventional handsomeness that was somehow more unsettling than the face paint had been. He wore Comme des Garçons when almost no one in mainstream culture had heard of it. He dressed like a man who had already been through every phase and arrived somewhere genuinely his own. That is harder than it sounds.
Top Gun came out in 1986. Aviator sales went up 40 percent the following month.
Tom Cruise
Two versions of Tom Cruise in the 80s are worth knowing. Top Gun Cruise: Levi’s 501 jeans, a white tee, a MA-1 bomber jacket and Ray-Ban Aviators, an outfit so effective that it single-handedly revived the bomber jacket and caused a reported 40 percent spike in aviator sunglass sales after the film released. Then there is Risky Business Cruise: white Oxford shirt, Ray-Ban Wayfarers, grey socks and no trousers, which is less relevant to everyday dressing but produced one of the most enduring images of the decade. He was not trying to be a style icon. He was just the most watchable man in the room.
Purple Rain. The trench coat. The heels. Nobody else on earth could have worn this // GETTY
Prince
Prince in the 80s is in a category of one and that is the whole point. Purple trench coats, ruffled shirts, high-heeled boots, eyeliner, the occasional full lace ensemble. It was maximalist, androgynous, deeply personal and completely impossible to copy without looking ridiculous. Nobody else looked ridiculous doing it because nobody else was doing it, only him. The Purple Rain era in particular produced some of the most photographed outfits of the decade. He wore exactly what he wanted and dared anyone to say something about it. Nobody did.
American Gigolo put Giorgio Armani on the map. Gere put American Gigolo on the map.
Richard Gere
Richard Gere in American Gigolo in 1980 is one of the first times mainstream cinema used clothing as a serious character statement. His wardrobe in that film was entirely Giorgio Armani, and the way he handled it, laying suits out on the bed, talking about fabric, treating clothes as something worth caring about, made Armani famous almost overnight. Off screen Gere was equally considered, dark suits, white shirts, the kind of minimal precision that made him look expensive without ever looking like he was trying. He is one of the reasons the Armani suit became the suit of the decade.
Newman in his 60s, still the best-looking man in the room. The Daytona on his wrist helped.
Paul Newman
Paul Newman was in his 50s and 60s for most of the 80s and remained effortlessly, almost irritatingly stylish throughout. He wore the same things he had always worn: slim chinos, open-collar shirts, a well-worn leather jacket, his Rolex Daytona on the wrist (now one of the most valuable watches in the world, sold at auction in 2017 for $17.8 million). He did not follow the decade’s fashion. He was completely indifferent to it. The whole look was based on fit, simplicity and the quiet confidence of a man who had been good-looking so long he had forgotten to be impressed by it. That kind of style does not date.
Gordon Gekko was fictional. The effect on how men dressed was very real.
Gordon Gekko
Gordon Gekko is a fictional character played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street, 1987, and his inclusion here is entirely justified by the effect his wardrobe had on the real world. Wide-shouldered pinstripe suits, white shirts with bold contrast collars and cuffs, braces, slicked-back hair, a watch you could see from across the boardroom. It was the visual language of unchecked ambition and it worked so well that real bankers and traders started dressing like him. Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick built the wardrobe as an expression of someone who used clothes as a power tool, and the audience received it exactly that way. Greed, apparently, was not the only thing that was good.