STRANGE BUT TRUE; WE ALL NEED A BIT OF EIGHTIES NOSTALGIA
Cult series ‘Stranger Things’ returns today, and with it some tips for your wardrobe, says Stephen Doig
To the uninitiated; look away now. If you haven’t found yourself binge-watching Stranger Things – that spine-tingling, part stephen King horror, part-cinematic pastiche, then this column will probably make little sense.
Part of the appeal of
Stranger Things, the wildly-anticipated second series of which launches today on Netflix, is the safety net of nostalgia it evokes. Set in the Eighties, it pays homage to the all-american adventure films of that decade – ET, The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Stand By
Me. It’s also a fantasy-fuelled escapist romp through an era when Donald Trump was just a swaggering businessman and terror attacks weren’t quite so everyday.
Never slow to catch on to a zeitgeist-y moment, fashion has followed suit; Louis Vuitton’s most recent women’s show featured a Stranger Things
T-shirt, while Harper’s
Bazaar enlisted the child stars of the show for a fashion shoot featured in its September issue.
While the young stars looked well turned-out in their best Brooks Brothers at this year’s GQ Awards, there’s something offputting about turning the teenage actors into fashion plates; this paper has previously called into question the brands and magazines feting 13-yearold Millie Bobby Brown as a clothes horse.
However, the costumes in the TV show – in all their Eighties glory – also happen to be just the ticket as we segue into autumn.
The setting of rural Indiana (which makes for lots of unsettling shots of barren woodlands) employs a vast deal of workwear; that is, rustic, solid, no-frills outerwear that has its roots in American functional attire of the 20th century. Happily, you don’t have to scour the vintage stores of east London; British brands such as Folk and Albam Clothing, which celebrates 10 years next week, specialise in nononsense jackets and coats.
Another style thread running through the series is corduroy, which has been wrestled out of the hands of your local geography teacher and this season reinterpreted by the likes of Brunello Cucinelli, Gucci and Berluti. The humble Harrington jacket – a mainstay of the highschoolers in the show – is also a handy between seasons piece. Created in the Thirties by Baracuta and popularised by Elvis Presley, it’s an item every man should have in his wardrobe.
And finally, whether you’re furiously pedalling your BMX away from approaching monsters from another dimension, or just heading onto the Central Line (it can be a similar experience in many ways), a trusty rucksack is no longer just the stuff of schoolboy high jinks. Opt for a version in leather for a more elevated approach and hold the top handle to look less tweenager. We’d say add a sense of encroaching dread and some government conspiracies, but then that might be a little too close to real life in 2017.