♪ ♪
ROB: It's been said that "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be."
But there is a time and a place
we all love to look back on,
and that is the 80s.
It was a decade when what we wore was big,
bold and not for everyone.
DMC: Yo!
TIFFANI: The colors! My mind was blown!
ROB: A time when success was defined by excess.
JEREMY: Power, glamour, greed is good.
DEE: Men were peacocks.
JOAN: You could wear anything; it was enormous fun.
ROB: But with all these looks to choose from,
it is our mission to narrow them down to a top ten,
the streetwear that defined the decade.
But only one will be the best of the best.
(theme music plays)
ROB: We're going to start with a "bang".
The unlikely story of an item that went from British
aristocracy to become one of the signature looks
of hip hop.
Let's tip our caps to number ten.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The 80s not only marched to a different drummer
it marched to a whole new rhythm...
♪ Put your hands in the air, put your hands in the air ♪
NARRATOR: Hip Hop.
♪ Pick it up, pick it up ♪
NARRATOR: And the crowning glory of hip-hop fashion is
our number ten...
♪ The party don't start till I walk in ♪
NARRATOR: The Kangol hat.
DANA: Kangols was hip hop at the time.
And if you had a Kangol,
you had a little juice because you had a Kangol.
DMC: Did I wear a Kangol hat?
Yes. I'm on album covers with Kangol hats on.
NARRATOR: The Kangol Hat became the defining look of
80s hip hop and like so many great stories,
ours begins in high school.
But LaGuardia High isn't just any high school
It was made famous in a movie and TV show...
♪ Fame! ♪
♪ I'm gonna live forever ♪
DANA: Let me stop right there and tell you how I got into rapping.
We in the classroom and we got a substitute teacher.
He starts banging on the table,
him and a few other dudes, you know, and he starts rapping.
And I'm like, I need to learn how to do this and that night
I went home and started writing a rap.
♪ Well, I walked into the office, what did I see? ♪
♪ A well shaped body with her back to me ♪
♪ Sitting in her chair with an all-white gown she said ♪
♪ Dana Dane won't you please lay down? ♪
The actual day that I can remember us becoming the
Kangol Crew was a day called hat and tie day.
You come in, you wear any type of hat you want,
and you wear a tie.
And you wear an incredible outfit.
So, we decided we were going to wear Kangols.
That's when we became the Kangol Crew .
What we had in common was we liked to dress fresh,
and that's what they called it, "Fresh".
MAN: How'd you rock your hat man?
MAN 2: I sport it fresh, Holmes.
MAN: Word, word.
DMC: Dressing fresh in the 80s was a statement.
I am somebody and I feel good about myself.
NARRATOR: And feeling fresh was dressing like...
conservative golfers?
DANA: We saw cats on the golf course with the Kangols and thought,
hey, that's a cool look right there.
NARRATOR: Kangol started making berets in the UK in 1938
and went on to make headwear for generals,
princesses, and, yes, golfers.
Rappers like Dana Dane introduce Kangol to the street.
DANA: We just repurposed what was around us,
that's what hip hop was built from.
NARRATOR: But it's the Kangol bucket that becomes the
signature look of 80s hip-hop.
DMC: It was definitely organic word of mouth,
when I was little, I saw
"Whoah, that red Kangol's amazing, I gotta get one!"
♪ Pump, pump it up ♪
NARRATOR: Kangols took off like wildfire,
as 80s hip hop blazed up the charts.
♪ Pump, pump it up pump, pump it up ♪
♪ Pump, pump it up ♪
♪ Party all the time, pump, pump it up ♪
LONI: When LL Cool J came on, he had no shirt,
but he had on a Kangol, men would just focus on the hat,
I would focusing on the chest.
(giggles)
DANA: We like to say about hip hop that we didn't invent anything,
but we created everything.
DMC: When you put that Kangol on,
you felt like the baddest (bleep) on the planet.
ROB: Now, how on earth did we arrive at our Top Ten?
Good question.
A panel of eight experts ranked the items from ten to one
considering two factors:
80s 'wow',
their importance at the time, and 'impact',
their legacy today.
The panel's mission: to discover the most vital
streetwear fashion of the decade.
The 80s was also the decade when the fashion police had
trouble tracking many moving violations of good taste.
And when it comes to movement our number nine revolves
around a guy who inspired an entire sport where defying
gravity was the easy part.
NARRATOR: In the mid 1970s the skateboarding craze took off
among Southern California's rebellious youth.
In the early 80s those rebels were joined by a
new recruit who would change their game.
TONY: I was a teenager when I really got into skating most
heavily and had a pretty good run of success.
I was making a living, doing what I loved.
I was traveling the world.
NARRATOR: Tony Hawk knew you had to have the
right shoes in order to ride those urban waves.
TONY: I saw an advertisement in a skate magazine,
and I'll never forget, I thought,
"There's a shoe made for skateboarding",
I have to have it.
Vans shoes in the 80s were the skate shoes.
My dad drove me to the Vans store,
it was, like, a half-hour away from our house,
I knew right when I put on my first pair of Vans
and stood on a skateboard that that was the shoe.
NARRATOR: Steve Van Doren's family co-founded Vans on the
West Coast in the 60s.
Their clunky shoes were perfect for skaters.
STEVE: The special thing about the sole,
it was a waffle design that gripped the boards.
They "felt" the board better.
MAN: Tony, do that ollie dude, that Delmar, come on!
So sick.
TONY: They identified me as a skater probably most importantly,
I could feel that it was sticking to my board and
they actually do work on a skateboard.
NARRATOR: As Tony Hawk's career takes off,
Vans soar in popularity.
And get another boost from a stoner classic.
(thudding)
SPICOLI: That was my skull. I'm so wasted!
♪ Matty told Hatty ♪
♪ That's the thing to do ♪
MAN: Hey, hey come on down from there.
♪ To pull the wool with you ♪
♪ Wooly bully, wooly bully ♪
NARRATOR: But in the mid 80s the fortunes of skateboarding
and Vans are set to take a dive.
REPORTER: The sign reads no skateboarding,
and you won't find skateboarders, here on the
Loring Greenway where skateboarding is prohibited.
NARRATOR: But the 80s had a way of transforming
rebellion into merchandise.
Today, Vans is a $4-billion company.
And Tony Hawk?
Well, 4 decades later he's still riding Vans.
TONY: When I skate now,
I'm wearing the exact same model shoes that
I skated in when I was 14.
MAN: Pretty hot. That was mental!
ROB: We've gathered here today to count down the top ten
streetwear fashions of the 1980s and I'm proud to say
that number eight was inspired by one of my Outsiders co-stars.
♪ I can make love to you woman
♪ In five minutes' time ♪
BRYAN: All the good sunglasses,
all of them come out of the 80s.
NARRATOR: In the early 1980s Ray-Ban is a brand on the way
down so they decide to get busy getting noticed.
MARK: Tom Cruise in Risky Business with
the famous poster.
NARRATOR: Called 'product placement' the idea
is just to get a star to wear your product.
And after Tom Cruise turns Ray-Ban Wayfarers into a smash hit,
the company focuses on another of its
most iconic brands.
SETH: They're called Aviators,
these are things flyboys would use to fight glare when
they're flying planes.
NARRATOR: Aviators are really just standard military issue until...
♪ Highway to the danger zone ♪
♪ Gonna take you right into the danger zone ♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Tom Cruise relaunches these iconic sunglasses.
TOM: I feel the need...
BOTH: The need for speed!
(slap)
SETH: Aviator sunglasses are this innately all-American,
clean-cut heroic movie-star look.
It's no wonder they took off.
NARRATOR: The movie star coupled with Ray Ban Aviators
captures the mood of the times,
as another movie-star leads the charge for the US to
reclaim its military swagger.
(cheering)
Reagan (over PA): You ain't seen nothing yet.
JEN: Ronald Reagan was really starting to expand the
military at that time.
TOM: Let's go!
JEN: I'm sure they were really glad when that movie came out
because it's basically a long,
patriotic music video that all appealed very much
in Reagan's America.
SETH: Aviators just latched onto that, everybody had them.
NARRATOR: One year after Top Gun tops the box office,
Ray Ban's sales hit an all-time high of $1.2 billion.
And thanks to some maverick product placement Aviators are
as popular today as they've ever been.
STACY: I hope that Tom Cruise had stock in Ray-Bans,
that's all I'm saying.
NARRATOR: So far, we have the Kangol Hat at number ten,
the Vans shoe at number nine and Ray-Ban at number eight...
But our number seven is an item invented in the 50s
that shaped a fashion craze in the 80s.
DEE: It was incredibly flexible, and moveable,
it was awesome.
ANNOUNCER: Turn up your television okay,
'coz you're not gonna believe what you're about to hear.
Would you please join with me and welcome Twisted Sister.
DEE: I'm constantly asked what I miss the most about the 80s,
and I always say spandex because it was so liberating.
NARRATOR: In 1984 Twisted Sister hit the big time by turning
traditionally macho heavy metal on its head...
And stretching into a miracle fabric that would cover the
80s in athletic and not so athletic glory.
DEE: I cannot think of one place that I wore my spandex
that I ever regretted it.
I looked cool.
Spandex was comfortable, and everything was clear
as a bell.
There were no secrets.
I found out from some fans from back in the earliest days of the band,
that they said,
"did you know that we could see your junk?"
NARRATOR: And someone who had seen it all before was Dee's main squeeze.
DEE: I've really got to give credit to my wife, Suzette,
for introducing me and the band to spandex.
And that all started with her walking into the club one
night wearing a top she knew I liked only to find me on stage
wearing the same top.
And when she asked me why I was wearing the same top,
I said, "I told you I loved your top.
You didn't think I meant on you, did you?"
At that point she said, "I'm not going to have my boyfriend
wearing my clothes anymore." and started making
Twisted Sister's outfits as she did for the whole time.
WOMAN: My girdle, my girdle, I've lost my 18-hour girdle!
Oops, I've got it on.
NARRATOR: Bizarrely, spandex emerged from a lab
in Nazi Germany...
It was then refined by Dupont Chemicals and given the trade name Lycra.
JEREMY: Spandex and Lycra are the same thing but it's like
Kleenex and tissue.
NARRATOR: Call it what you will, Lycra or spandex,
just how did this fabulous fiber stretch
from being the outfit of choice for wrestlers and
rock-stars to becoming mainstream fashion?
JANE: Are you ready to do the workout?
GROUP: Yeah!
NARRATOR: After breaking her ankle on the
set of The China Syndrome,
Jane Fonda turns to aerobics to help
with her recovery.
JANE: Feel that burn.
NARRATOR: The 'Workout' video becomes the best-selling VHS
of all time and millions of keep fit fans ditch their
polyester for spandex.
JANE: One, two, three, four, five, six...
LONI: Spandex are you kidding me?
Everybody wore spandex.
STACY: It was a cornerstone of fashion design.
WOMAN: Fall, 1987 Donna Karan sum it up.
DONNA: Stretch.
STACY: Where would Donna Karan be without spandex?
Where would Gianni Versace be without spandex?
Spandex made clothes easier for women.
It became so popular because it was so accessible.
LONI: And it came in different colors.
I had some hot pink spandex, I had white ones,
I looked like a walking burrito,
I did not care because I had on my spandex.
DEE: There's never a bad time for spandex.
ROB: In the 80s, the counterculture of the 60s became
over-the-counterculture.
Rock and roll became corporate and got its own
24/7 TV channel.
Sitcoms like Family Ties turned aging hippies
into a punchline.
Even jeans swapped the word 'ordinary' with 'designer'
creating a product that re-invented another revolution.
Get ready for our number six.
♪ ♪
JEREMY: I thought acid wash denim was disgusting.
Because it really was associated with all the music
that was tacky, like Tiffany.
♪ I think we're alone now. ♪
♪ Alone now. ♪
♪ There doesn't seem to be anyone around ♪ ♪
NARRATOR: In the early 1980s sales of traditional denim are in decline.
The industry needs a radical reboot.
Meet the guy who would become the
"godfather of denim."
ADRIANO: When we started working in the 80s,
we had totally different concept.
My mission was to bring the jean to a different level.
NARRATOR: Adriano's vision is to create a new look inspired
by 1960s surfer culture.
The idea was to wash the jeans with bleach and stones,
also known as 'stonewashing'.
Then, a happy accident.
At the factory, somebody forgets to add the water that
dilutes the bleach.
♪ Ooh, I'll bet you're wondering how I knew ♪
ADRIANO: And we realized that was creating an effect that was
very, very interesting.
NARRATOR: Although acid wash is born out of a blunder,
it's a very profitable one.
STACY: The treatment of acid wash was revolutionary.
We'd never seen anything like that before.
MAN: Technology helped invent new ways to wear denim.
Everything that looked old was new again.
NARRATOR: Within a few years, acid wash denim is everywhere
and worn by every celebrity,
from Dolly Parton to Andre Agassi.
TIFFANI: I loved it, I had my fair share of
acid wash jeans and jackets.
And then when they started coming out with the colored acid wash,
my mind was blown.
STACY: It totally revived denim as its own
market within the fashion industry,
it wasn't just denim it was acid wash denim.
NARRATOR: And love it or loathe it,
acid wash denim just won't go away.
TIFFANI: It's neat to see fashion always turn a little
bit like a full circle and here we are,
acid wash is back again.
NARRATOR: Acid wash denim joins our top ten at number six,
but as we close in on the final five
80s streetwear fashions,
it's time to seriously "pad" our numbers.
JOAN: They used to make bras with built-in shoulder pads
that you'd wear under a shirt or a t-shirt.
ROB: So, we've run through some of the major food groups
of 80s fashion: Ray-Bans, designer jeans,
sneakers and of course, our beloved spandex.
Memorable items, but not good enough to make it into
our top five.
Or in this case, should I say 9 to 5.
NARRATOR: The 80s were a time of wars,
both Cold and cultural.
Ronald Reagan took on the Evil Empire,
and at the same time,
a battle of the sexes was raging,
and that particular battle wore an iconic uniform.
LONI: The 80s shoulder pads was the business.
BRONSON: Shoulder pads and big hair and bam and Dynasty.
(Dynasty theme music)
JOAN: Dressing up as Alexis Colby was fantastic
because she had unlimited funds,
she had an unlimited budget to buy her clothes and her jewels.
I like it. Very nice.
Much bigger than the office that you used to have.
Excellent decorator, anyone I know?
And by the second season I could call the shots,
and one of the shots I called was I had just been in Paris
and Pierre Cardin had brought out the new look of shoulder pads.
And I loved it.
JOAN: It looks rather good, doesn't it?
MAN: Yes, it does.
NARRATOR: It's not long before the trend spreads to Southfork
and oozes onto the set of every glamorous TV show.
PATRICK: Dynasty started high fashion a little sooner than
we did and then all of the women on our show went ahem
and then boy all of a sudden,
the wardrobe just got to be the star of the show
for several years.
LUCY: I think this is all so exciting.
Don't you Sue Ellen?
NARRATOR: Dynasty and Dallas glamorized the look,
but real women in the workplace also needed a
uniform that meant business.
KATIE: There's a lot of different ways that
shoulder pads trickled down to the average girl,
one would be through films like Working Girl.
MELANIE: I've never worked for somebody who was younger
than me before or for a woman.
SIGOURNEY: Well, there's a first time for everything.
It's not gonna be a problem is it, Tess?
MELANIE: No, no. SIGOURNEY: Good.
Why don't you pour us a couple coffees and come on inside?
I'm light and no sugar.
WOMAN: Good afternoon, do your clothes get you respect?
Or whistles?
Do you dress for success?
Today I'll be speaking to a clothing engineer.
He is John T. Molloy. The book is called,
The Woman's Dress for Success Book.
NARRATOR: Leave it to a man to tell a woman that
she should dress like a man to get ahead.
JOHN: If a woman wants to give orders,
this is what she wears.
If a woman wishes to be taken seriously,
this is what she wears.
Now, clothing never gets anyone into the boardroom....
But the wrong clothing can keep you out.
ELLEN: What women did in the 80s was basically do a female
version of a male silhouette.
CALVIN: Businesswomen need to look a certain way.
They're attractive, feminine clothes that fit
into a business world.
STACY: The higher the shoulder pad, the closer to God.
And that held true for the American working woman,
trying to muscle in,
into what was male territory so the bigger
the shoulder pad the easier it was to
make space for women.
JOAN: I think that there were women who were role models on
television and in movies.
And I feel the 80s women came into their own.
They were fabulous.
JOAN: I go or I stay where I choose.
NARRATOR: Shoulder pads sits at number five but with four
contenders left in the race it's still all to play for.
But what will be our number one?
Sneakers that got banned?
A shirt that bought you into an exclusive club,
or a look ripped off from Colombian drug lords?
So many choices, so little time.
ROB: So, we're more than halfway through
and the competition is ugly.
And so are some of the outfits.
Our number four is the story of a bunch of guys who saw both
beauty and cool in the most unlikely of places.
♪ I think it's very vital to rock a rhyme that's ♪
♪ right on time it's tricky, here we go ♪
♪ It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme ♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Run DMC are the first 80s hip hop band to make
it big in the charts and they're about to make
streetwear history.
DMC: When we did our first album,
Run's brother Russell Simmons was like,
"Y'all need stage wardrobe."
But we wanted to be authentic, and we wanted to be real.
So, our wardrobe is the track suits,
it's what we wear, it's real.
♪ You keep on rock shock cause this is it ♪
♪ Huh ♪ ♪
JASON: In the 80s, Run DMC were saying,
we're just going to do our own thing.
We're from the hood and we're going to represent the hood.
And they wore track suits because that's what they wore
every day and they wore it on stage.
NARRATOR: Sneakers were also part of the look.
And they loved one particular brand so much they
made a record about it.
♪ My Adidas. ♪
♪ Walk through concert doors. ♪
♪ And roam all over coliseum floors. ♪
♪ I stepped on stage, ♪
♪ at Live Aid. ♪
♪ All the people gave and the poor got paid. ♪
♪ And out of speakers I did speak, ♪
♪ I wore my sneakers but I'm not a sneak. ♪
NARRATOR: In 1986 'My Adidas' is a top five hit.
Sales of the brand soar.
LONI: Run DMC made Adidas popular.
The whole thing is about look and when you're looking
for a certain type of look, Adidas was giving it to you.
NARRATOR: This mysterious spike in sales causes some
serious head-scratching back at Adidas' headquarters
in Germany.
DMC: They couldn't understand why is it selling like this,
and rumor has it, it was like an intern,
you know what I'm sayin, that was at Adidas
"Yo dude, what you don't know?
Run DMC made a hip-hop song about Adidas.
Hold up, hold up, hold up.
"What the hell is a RUN DMC?"
So, what they did,
being the big mighty corporation they are,
they sent a spy, like the CIA
"You need to go to New York and find out what
this Run DMC thing is and what is
this hip-hop thing."
NARRATOR: It's a hot July night at a
sold-out Run DMC show and the spy,
marketing exec Angelo Anastasio turns up to
see them play.
DMC: We get to the point where we're ready to do the Adidas record
and Run says "Take it off."
I take off my shoe.
He says, "hold it up."
I hold up my shoe and then Run was like
"D, what is that?"
And I looked at Run and I said...
♪ My Adidas. ♪
♪ Walk through concert doors. ♪
♪ And roam all over coliseum floors. ♪
♪ My Adidas! ♪
And we did the record and the whole place went crazy.
♪ With mic in my hand, I cold took command ♪
♪ My Adidas and me close as can be ♪ ♪
DMC: All 18,000 people, held up their new sneakers,
Angelo called back to Adidas in Germany
"It's true! It's true!
There is this thing called Run DMC and this thing called
hip hop and they made a sneaker and it's the
biggest thing that I ever saw.
DMC: After Adidas saw that show "we're going to give you
an endorsement deal."
We said "Huh?"
We didn't understand the language,
we couldn't comprehend that.
I'm gonna get new Adidas for life?
NARRATOR: Adidas and Run DMC sign a $1.6-million
endorsement deal, the first ever between a sports brand
and a hip-hop group.
STACY: A track suit before Run DMC was like a track suit.
You wore it to warm up for tennis and after it was a
style street staple.
DMC: It wasn't like we sat there and said,
"We're going to be pioneers of marketing and commercialization,"
that wasn't the plan.
♪ We're down for forever and we won't be ♪
DMC: It was crazy.
♪ My Adidas ♪
DMC: And we didn't make that record to get money
from Adidas or nothing,
we just made it cos it was like I said,
this is what all the youth wearing,
it was like our tribute.
ROB: Now there are some 80s streetwear fashions that are
better left in the dustbin of history.
Uh, parachute pants anyone?
But coming up, three must wear essentials.
ROB: So, let's talk 80s Hollywood:
high concepts ruled the TV airwaves,
who can forget NBC's Alf, or the A-Team or,
as much as we try, Manimal?
Back in the day one of the smart guys at the same network
bought another show idea that had been delivered to him
on a cocktail napkin.
It would turn into our number three.
That very high concept?
MTV Cops.
NARRATOR: September 16, 1984,
the first episode of an entirely new kind of
TV show airs.
It fuses the narrative rhythms of a cop drama...
DON: Freeze! Miami Vice.
NARRATOR: With the designer looks and
execution of a music video.
An alluring mixture that's going to launch a sleek kind
of men's fashion.
JEN: The Miami Vice look was very much based on what the
two main characters Crockett and Tubbs would wear.
Which were suits with a t-shirt,
and then loafers but with no socks.
Which was a revolution.
DON: This is me. WOMAN: Where are your socks?
DON: I don't own a pair anymore.
REGINALD: I loved that show so much I took every
opportunity I could to wear loafers without socks.
NARRATOR: Miami Vice is one of the biggest TV cop
shows of the 80s.
DAVE: He plays Detective Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice.
Please welcome Don Johnson.
STACY: Don Johnson, ugh, he could wear a linen suit like
nobody's business.
DAVE: This is the hottest show, I guess, on television.
Here you are on the cover of Us Magazine.
Don Johnson.
Here you are on the cover of Rolling Stone with your buddy
Philip Michael Thomas.
REGINALD: Anything would look cool on him,
put a shower curtain on him!
DON: Just because you work homicide doesn't mean you have
to dress like a corpse, look at this guy!
MAN: Hey, alpha-106 1-A. Camera mark!
NARRATOR: Show co-creator Michael Mann and his costume
team had to keep up with all these costume changes,
as many as eight per episode.
JEN: I don't think viewers realized that Crockett and
Tubbs were wearing something that might be worn by the kind
of guys that they were actually trying to apprehend.
NARRATOR: In the early 80s Colombian drug lords flood
Miami with cash from cocaine.
DON: On the one hand, we're taking a little bit
of a license there.
But on the other hand, these guys that we're after,
live that way.
So, in order to get them, you gotta be like one of them.
MAN: Don't worry, I'm gonna get you some new clothes.
NARRATOR: At its height,
Miami Vice is watched by up to 22 million people...
DON: Eddie, no!
NARRATOR: Many of whom then went out shopping.
STACY: They did make a huge impact culturally.
So, once you started seeing how popular the show was,
you started seeing the fashion replicated.
MAN: This year, tradition is out, and Miami Vice is in.
This outfit would run you about $670.
Can you imagine how much it would be if you had
to buy socks too?
MEAT LOAF: Don Johnson's outfit was copied by a lot
a lot of people.
If he wore something that Friday,
the next week you saw 15 guys walking down the
street with the same suit.
MAN: And when the stars showed up,
the crowd went crazy.
Don Johnson smiled at you? GIRL: Yeah.
MAN: And was that good? GIRL: Oh God!
WOMAN: I touched Don Johnson!
REGINALD: If I'm perfectly honest at that time if I had
to be a white man, I'd have been Don Johnson.
NARRATOR: The Miami Vice designer outfit literally
"wows" the 80s, and some 'cool dudes' continue to be
influenced by it today.
ROB: Come on, I think the Miami Vice look could have
been a little further up the chart.
I mean it was the first time a TV series was designed to look
and feel a certain way,
but number two may have the simplest,
most powerful brand of all time:
a man on a horse wielding a mallet.
RALPH: I think I offer a value to the consumer.
I'm offering a product that is beautiful.
And the best that I can possibly make.
ALVIN: Ralph Lauren started out as Ralph Lipshitz and one
of his first jobs was working at Brooks' Brothers.
And what he saw there was the iconic quality of the
buttoned-down shirt so when he started Ralph Lauren,
he looked at what could people wear that would make
them feel part of the club,
the way the Brooks' Brothers customer felt.
RALPH: Bob, do you wanna take off your hat?
When you're tipping it over, take off your hat.
STACY: He did an amazing thing,
I think he realized his own dream.
He wanted this air of what would be, I guess,
American aristocracy.
NARRATOR: From his humble beginnings selling ties in the 60s,
by the mid 80s Ralph Lauren had hit the big time.
And in the spring of 1986, he opens his first complete
lifestyle store in New York.
ALVIN: There was a building at 72nd and Madison Avenue called
the Rhinelander Mansion.
And he knew instinctively that that mansion with all
of its Gothic details would represent the clubbiness that his
clothes suggested.
STACY: The interior had old leather couches, plaid blankets.
There was a library.
Part of his dream was to live the fantasy to meet
his own aspirations.
NARRATOR: And all this aspiration required was to
wear a simple shirt.
ELIZABETH: Ralph Lauren's polo shirt is a classic.
And belongs to this very short list of very established
iconic garments and that is definitely one of them.
JEN: I think of Ralph Lauren as the ultimate dresser
of preppy people.
And preppyness was a huge phenomenon in the 80s.
So, if you were distinguishing yourself as preppy,
you had to have a polo shirt.
NARRATOR: Lauren was inspired by Lewis Lacey,
an Anglo Argentine polo player of the 1920s.
ALVIN: You associated it with class.
You saw Prince Charles playing polo,
you saw all of those men down in Venezuela on
their horses playing polo.
ALVIN: You could be a part of that group or associated with
that group just by wearing that shirt.
STACY: A show of wealth was a very important aspect
of the 80s.
The 80s was really show and tell.
That price point made it accessible enough that if you had the shirt,
you could be part of the brand.
You were buying the
Ralph Lauren vision of the world.
NARRATOR: The polo shirt was a bestseller in the aspirational
80s and led to the global success of Lauren's vision,
success that paid a big dividend.
REPORTER: It took Ralph Lauren three decades to build
his two and a half billion-dollar company.
But it will likely take him just one day to earn half a
billion dollars selling a piece of it.
MAN: Mr. Lauren and his family can put in the bank
about $450 million after this offering.
Which is not a bad piece of lose change.
ELIZABETH: I always loved his look,
it was very influential,
it was very thought out,
it was distinctive, it was a very clear look.
That's why it's still here.
STACY: Ralph Lauren was one of the first designers
to understand that fashion could be lifestyle.
Everything about the Ralph Lauren world was in
that one shirt.
(applause)
ROB: Now we've celebrated branding,
logos and footwear in our ranking of 80s streetwear.
When we come back, our number one,
an item that truly takes off into legend.
NARRATOR: So far, we've seen nine of the streetwear
fashions that defined a decade,
from fashions born on the street to styles from Paris,
but nine contenders have fallen
and there can be only one number one.
ROB: 80s fashion often revolved around huge personalities,
from Tony Hawk and Vans to Joan Collins and
shoulder pads to Ralph Lauren and Polo,
but now a full court press to our number one.
Inspired by my favorite athlete of all time.
The GOAT. His Airness himself.
FORREST: Once upon a time not so long-ago shoes were just
shoes and basketball shoes were no more glamorous than
any other piece of sports equipment.
That was before Michael Jordan learned how to fly.
MAN: Way up and the Tar Heels go in front of...
AMBER: Michael Jordan is the GOAT.
I'm a huge Michael Jordan fan.
MAN: Jordan, another three pointer. Got it.
TONY: He defined basketball he was that good.
MEAT LOAF: I don't think anything was more iconic in
the 80s than Michael Jordan.
MAN: In the middle of the break to Michael Jordan.
DMC: Michael Jordan was dominant because he was so
damn good at what he did.
MAN: He's only played professional basketball a few months,
but at age 21,
Michael Jordan is the National Basketball Association's
hottest draw.
NARRATOR: In 1984 two worlds collide.
Michael Jordan is a young player fresh from college and
just drafted, third, by the Chicago Bulls.
He has a lot to prove.
Nike is an upstart brand determined to
take on its rivals, by any means necessary.
REPORTER: A total of 100 college coaches have Nike contracts.
So, what's the point of all of this for Nike?
SONNY: The exposure.
REPORTER: And that exposure can give Nike a big boost
in its battle with long-running industry leaders,
Converse and Adidas.
It has become the sneaker wars.
NARRATOR: But recruiting a new soldier to do battle with the competition
is no slam-dunk.
DAVID: Michael had never heard of Nike.
He wanted to go with Adidas.
I wanted him to go with Nike because I thought that they
needed him the most,
that they'd be the most aggressive in promoting him.
He said 'David, there's no way in history I'm going
to get on a plane and fly seven hours to
Portland, Oregon, to meet Nike.
So, I called his parents and his mom said,
"Don't worry, he'll be there."
And sure enough he got on the plane,
but he didn't crack a smile the entire day.
I thought he was going to fire me when the day was over.
NARRATOR: But Nike was about to make an offer that few
mortals could refuse.
JACQUES: They offered him a signature shoe which isn't
something that was happening very often back then.
Unlike today, where a lot of athletes have signature deals,
back then, it wasn't part of the plan.
DAVID: No other basketball player had that at the time.
To put his deal in perspective,
he received the largest guarantee by far of any player,
so I leaned over to say to Michael, sheepishly,
"So what do you think?"
and he goes
"God this is amazing. Sign me with Nike".
You could have blown me away, I was stunned.
And I learned for the first time this guy is a hell of a poker player.
NARRATOR: Jordan lent his name,
and his agent's marketing imagination took flight.
DAVID: And just instantly in my mind I got this idea.
WOMAN (over speaker): Welcome to Flight 23.
DAVID: Nike had just come out with a new technology for
their running shoes called air soles.
And I said okay we're going to call it Air Jordans.
It's a double entendre.
Air for the air technology and Air because Michael plays
above the rim.
MICHAEL: Who said man was not meant to fly?
MAN: Air Jordans from Nike.
NARRATOR: Nike's Air Jordans went on sale April 1st 1985
with promotional hype that even stood out in the
larger-than-life 80s.
AMBER: People saw a black man excelling and people
wanted to be like Mike, so they got his shoe.
NARRATOR: Jordans were popular on the streets but not
on the pro court.
DAVID: The NBA banned it they said it didn't comport
with the color scheme.
DAVE: What's wrong with the coloring?
What rule do we violate here?
MICHAEL: Well, it doesn't have any white in it.
DAVE: Huh, well neither does the NBA.
DAVID: My friend Rob Strasser calls me in a panic and says
"God what have we done? The League banned the shoes."
I said, "That is fantastic" and he said, "Are you crazy?"
and I said "No, no,
we're going to do a banned in Boston commercial tomorrow."
MAN: On September 15th Nike created a revolutionary
new basketball shoe, on October 18th,
the NBA, threw them out of the game.
Fortunately, the NBA can't stop you from wearing them.
DAVID: And it certainly worked.
NARRATOR: Air Jordans send Nike, the NBA,
the Chicago Bulls and Jordan on the way to becoming
multi-billion-dollar brands...
Sports revolve around statistics,
and our number one seriously dunks on all the competition.
AMBER: I actually have a whole closet full of Jordans,
it was just the shoe to have.
MAN: Michael Jordan style.
DAVID: Michael became so much the face of Nike that a lot of
people in the early days called the company 'Mikey'.
I think he established that it was cool to be an African American athlete,
to be the face of a company, that was unheard of.
So, Michael is truly a pioneer.
MICHAEL: I want to retire from the game with the respect of my peers
and to be reviewed as one of the game's best.
NARRATOR: No living, breathing mere mortal
human being could deny Michael Jordan that legacy,
and Michael definitely stands alone.
MAN: How do you like that for fast?
NARRATOR: Doesn't he, Rob?
CREW: Whoo!
(laughter)