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David Bailey: Eighties
In the 1980s, fashion wanted to make a statement and found in legendary British fashion photographer David Bailey its perfect chronicler. After Bailey shaped the style of the Swinging Sixties, fashion in the eighties posed a new brighter colours, higher glamour, statuesque models, extreme makeup, spandex, lycra, jumpsuits, power dressing, big hair, and as Grace Coddington puts it in her introduction, “jackets with padded shoulders over the shortest mini-skirts and dangerously high-heeled shoes.”
Eighties compiles Bailey’s era-defining fashion photography from the pages of Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris, Tatler, and countless others. Featuring couture, catwalk, and ready-to-wear collections by the epoch’s seminal designers, including Azzedine Alaïa, Comme des Garçons, Guy Laroche, Missoni, Stephen Jones, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent, the book stands as a testament to a decade that dismantled hierarchies of taste to reintroduce fun and sex into fashion, reminding us that we need not think of either as dirty words. Here, the jewellery sparkles, the silks shimmer, and the suits sprawl. The most beautiful are captured at their most playful, invincible, and provocatively sexy. We see fabled 1980s icons and Catherine Bailey, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Catherine Deneuve, Princess Diana, Jerry Hall, Marie Helvin, Grace Jones, Kelly LeBrock, Christy Turlington, Tina Turner, and many more.
The cultural resonances of the 1980s present on our screens, runways, and concert stages make today ideal for recontextualising its enduring legacy of maximalism and excess. Eighties offers a unique opportunity to do so with David Bailey as a guide, and interpreter, who’s never afraid to wink at his audience. As Bailey says in his foreword, “The eighties turned out to be magic.” Here, that magic comes alive.
Eighties compiles Bailey’s era-defining fashion photography from the pages of Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris, Tatler, and countless others. Featuring couture, catwalk, and ready-to-wear collections by the epoch’s seminal designers, including Azzedine Alaïa, Comme des Garçons, Guy Laroche, Missoni, Stephen Jones, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent, the book stands as a testament to a decade that dismantled hierarchies of taste to reintroduce fun and sex into fashion, reminding us that we need not think of either as dirty words. Here, the jewellery sparkles, the silks shimmer, and the suits sprawl. The most beautiful are captured at their most playful, invincible, and provocatively sexy. We see fabled 1980s icons and Catherine Bailey, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Catherine Deneuve, Princess Diana, Jerry Hall, Marie Helvin, Grace Jones, Kelly LeBrock, Christy Turlington, Tina Turner, and many more.
The cultural resonances of the 1980s present on our screens, runways, and concert stages make today ideal for recontextualising its enduring legacy of maximalism and excess. Eighties offers a unique opportunity to do so with David Bailey as a guide, and interpreter, who’s never afraid to wink at his audience. As Bailey says in his foreword, “The eighties turned out to be magic.” Here, that magic comes alive.
296 pages, Hardcover
Published February 26, 2025
About the author
David Bailey
66 books2 followersDavid Bailey is one of the most respected photographers in the world. He worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue magazine, but he is also known for his work on the ‘Swinging London’ scene from the 1960s, which gave him celebrity photographer status.
Bailey’s fashion work and celebrity portraiture, characterized by stark backgrounds and dramatic lighting effects, transformed British fashion and celebrity photography from chic but reserved stylization to something more youthful and direct. His work reflects the 1960s British cultural trend of breaking down antiquated and rigid class barriers by injecting a working-class or “punk” look into both clothing and artistic products. Bailey himself became a celebrity who epitomized “swinging London”; he was known for his affairs with several celebrated women, among them the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Catherine Deneuve, whom he married in 1965 (divorced 1972). He is thought to have inspired the role of the photographer, Thomas, in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-up (1966).
Bailey’s fashion work and celebrity portraiture, characterized by stark backgrounds and dramatic lighting effects, transformed British fashion and celebrity photography from chic but reserved stylization to something more youthful and direct. His work reflects the 1960s British cultural trend of breaking down antiquated and rigid class barriers by injecting a working-class or “punk” look into both clothing and artistic products. Bailey himself became a celebrity who epitomized “swinging London”; he was known for his affairs with several celebrated women, among them the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Catherine Deneuve, whom he married in 1965 (divorced 1972). He is thought to have inspired the role of the photographer, Thomas, in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-up (1966).
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March 4, 2025
Every model- Caucasian, even the photos were in colour
March 9, 2026
David Bailey, another iconic and brilliant photographer, takes the audience on a journey through the 80s to relive the memories of some of the most wonderful people and their lives...from the pop diva Tina Turner to the most elegant Princess Diana. Photographs not only are worth a thousand words but also transcend time to take us through some of the most memorable periods.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews