As it was, she achieved the double whammy of singing catchy songs about sex and finding a place on many a cultural theorist’s reading list. Had Madonna, that siren of the semiotic age, really had her wits about her, she’d have told us to get metaphysical because we’re living in a culturally material world. For the fashion pack, it is bound to prompt reminiscences of how great it was to have money to shop, Chanel suits to buy. How were the Eighties for you?The six-part series ‘Peter York’s Eighties’ starts on Saturday at 9.30pm on BBC2 BBC Books is publishing an accompanying book on 11 January.. Certainly, they don’t need many clothes.While we should be prepared for the return of the short skirt, the power jacket and the shoulder pad (indeed, it is already on the way back) among those few who have managed to hold on to conventional jobs, the golden years of turning frocks into big money may well have gone for good Which makes Peter York’s Eighties all the more compelling. Anti-road campaigners, eco-warriers, organic farmers, McLibel unwaged legal activists or self-employed craftspeople probably have the “buzz” jobs of the later half of the Nineties That’s if they can still be called jobs.

The cash tills whirred.Ah, the Eighties! They were about being in advertising, banking, estate agency, corporate raiding and all demanded a constant change of clothes. In the mid-Nineties, some people are still employed as advertising executives, bankers, estate agents and asset strippers but theirs are not the “buzz” professions and in any case, what with negative equity and school fees , they have less to spend on clothes. Meanwhile, designers got the trappings to go with their fame They got the penthouses, the beach houses, the yachts Designer clothes became the mark that one was “someone”. Karl Lagerfeld breathed new life, and an unprecedented, calculated and clever vulgarity into the Chanel suit. In that decade, dressmakers became known as designers and Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan became household names in the way they had never been before. Donna Karan invented the body suit (you popper-studded it over your panty hose, which seemed like a terribly good idea at the time) and was hailed as a working woman designing for working women. Who cared that Gere played an unsavoury character framed for murder He looked great.

Sixteen years on, just about every Hollywood power player still has the Armani label in his wardrobe. So does every “City Lad” who still has a job to go for.The fashion business loved the Eighties. In 1979, the movie director Paul Schrader visited him in Milan to ask him to costume the story of a Los Angeles male hooker. In 1980, the scene in American Gigolo in which Richard Gere opens the wardrobe and matches Armani shirts with Armani ties with Armani trousers, made Armani famous. They screamed of status in a way today’s Chanel suit (sans gold buttons and braid) does not. And, although many people are embarrassed by what they did in the Eighties (York’s series recalls the game of “Wad” where City boys would pull out stacks of cash. The chap with the smallest wad each day had to buy the drinks), they are not embarrassed by what they wore.Eighties style was smart style It suited the moment It made people feel strong.

No wonder those involved in the fashion business long for the structure, the signals of Eighties clothes to return. These were the glory years, and they probably began, with rare symmetry, in 1980 itself. Back in 1978, Giorgio Armani was not a well-known name worldwide. The power suit (for men and women) was meant to be viewed by the wearer, the wearer was meant to enjoy the sight of his or herself, reflected in all that polished chrome, all that so-Eighties glass.The Chanel suit, the Armani suit, the Alaia dress said something about the wearer. Wide shoulders (on men and women) looked smart and they imbued power. The business suit, whether with trousers or with a skirt, provided a forceful, yet practical uniform.

The Eighties dress wasn’t a camel mohair shift, only to be worn by some slip-of-a-girl who never eats lunch, but a figure-flattering black jersey number, injected with Lycra and (important) with sleeves included, that a woman with an agenda could pull on and feel confident in.Eighties clothes weren’t for pulling on and forgetting (that old myth) Instead, they called attention to themselves. If the pioneers from political thinkers to urban clubbers to arbitrageurs to estate agents charted the mood of the Eighties, then designers provided them with the armour in which to go forth and conquer. For spring/summer 1996, there is a colour revival of apple green and tangerine, flame red and canary yellow, the like of which we haven’t seen since about 1986. Even the Japanese, who shocked fashion pundits at the dawn of the Eighties with their apocalyptic matt black vision, are getting into some very mid-Eighties bright colour for 1996.So if the clothes are about to come back, what were they like? Of course, you know the answer. Among those who are not dedicated to le dernier cri of fashion, Eighties-style has never gone away.