Editorial

We are pleased to present the book on the Eighties edited by Fabriano Fabbri. During the decade, for the first time, fashion is recognized as one of the most significant expressions of contemporary culture, a role it still plays today. It could only be a topic of great interest to scholars, especially Italians, given the fundamental contribution of our country to the consolidation of industry and the fashion system at national and international level. The proof was the enthusiastic response of many authors to this “call for paper” which, as we shall see, is developed in the various contributions from complementary points of view: from innovations in style and production, to lifestyles and representations. If the decade is characterized by excess and decoration, with which it is almost stereotypically associated, it is also true that these experiments are counterpointed by equally interesting experiments in the field of minimalism and essentiality. We can say that the eighties were characterized by the multiplicity of contributions and also by contradictions, for the construction of a fashion that sometimes was pure stylism, sometimes it was contaminated with expressions closer to design and architecture. Let’s not forget that the decade created the stilisti, even if the roots of the phenomenon belong to the previous one. This decade, more than others, as the essays contained in the volume demonstrate, was relevant to affirm the value of multidisciplinarity in fashion research, necessary both for an analysis of the present, and for its historicization, still unfortunately in its infancy in Italy. The essays deal with many of the manifestations that in a broad sense are ascribable to fashion, underlining the interchange and mutual influence of art, photography, journalism, narration, exhibition, music. The multiplicity and contradictions typical of the Eighties are analyzed by the various authors with the scientific rigor necessary to radiograph the complexity of one of the founding decades of contemporary culture. As Fabriano Fabbri writes in the introduction, there is no claim to have exhausted a topic, but there is the satisfaction of having (re) opened a debate that we hope will continue, here and elsewhere.