Welcome back to the top Bananas
News of the Bananarama summer reunion sent me spinning into a 1980s reverie this week.
I was looking at photographs of the band with one of my younger colleagues – for whom the girl trio might as well have been an act from the music-hall era. Nevertheless she was struck – impressed, I’d go as far as to say, by the trio’s tomboyish style.
I was pretty lucky to hit adolescence in the mid-Eighties when sexiness wasn’t really a requisite for a British girl group. Celebrities as we know them now didn’t really exist back then.
In that era and at that age it was popstars and only popstars – MTV, Top of the Pops and Smash ash Hits were all – who demonstrated the different ways you could be a woman. Apart from Margaret Thatcher and the Princess of Wales, I suppose. Truth be told, Keren, Sara and Siobhan do look a little bit of a state with their scarecrow back-combed hair, baggy Boy T-shirts, ripped jeans and layers of tutus, tights and leggings. I remember wearing all those layers too, so unflattering! But their scruffiness was part of their goofy appeal. Yes, there was a crop-top or two and loads of mini skirts but there was never any sense that they were dressing for the boys – or anyone apart from themselves. And the look was always grounded by a pair of thicksoled black Dr Marten’s or brothel creepers – even when they did glamour. Aged 14, I christened the first Little Black Dress I ever wore my “Bananarama dress”. Off-the-shoulder and trimmed with marabou, it was inspired by what the group wore for their infamous performance of Love in theth First Degree at the 1987 Brit Awards. A watercooler moment (before anyone in Britain knew what a watercooler was) they were backed by 14 male dancers wearing only black belted briefs and knee-high socks. Phew! As SmashSm Hits would have said. If not, Phwoar! And thanks Bananarama for doing it your own way.