Choose your favourite decade in make up and hair and explain why Essay

Choose your favourite decade in make up and hair and explain why - Essay Example or Miss. Coming out of the confusion of the seventies with its disco and punk rock, the eighties became increasingly concerned with symbols of power and business. This was encouraged by the privatization of industries and the de-regulation of the stock market introduced as a part of Thatcherism. As a result, the prevailing attitude regarding the economy became one of every man for himself. Electronics were gaining in popularity in many areas of life – synthesizers and keyboards in music, the introduction of the music video and digital animation, computers in the workplace and video games from the arcade becoming available in the home. New innovations in technology including the ‘nuclear age’, innovations in hair gel and mousse and increased use of personal technology made the science fiction shows on television seem possible just around the corner. All of these elements combined together to create a vibrant and outspoken era in hair, fashion and makeup that thrill s me with its energy and innovative symbolism. One of the major influences on 80s fashions was the designer Vivienne Westwood, who developed her talents in the thick of the 1960s and 1970s rock and roll movement in Britain. Her fashions exemplify the sexual freedom and aggressive stance of female expression emerging in the women’s movements that rocked the world at this time. Through her early designs, Westwood discovered that â€Å"there was a dramatic potential in the clothes themselves that could be heightened: laden with associations, biker gear links sexuality, violence and death, in a twentieth century archetype† (Savage, 2001: 28). She began a new line of clothes that were based on these ideas by adding metal studs, chicken bones, chains, zippers and other gear to the clothing she made. Doing this, Westwood became the mother of the punk rock fashions (Savage, 2001: 28). These designs included a heavy use of the corset as a fetish object, frequently making it in leather,