I ❤️the ‘80s: a Gen Z Mallrat + Ryan Gosling’s 'The Fall Guy' Outfits
Hello, hello, hello!
Welcome to the first official issue of Whatever Nevermind! We’re so excited to have you here. This week we’re attending the premiere of Andrew McCarthy’s documentary, Brats, at the Tribeca Festival, and we think it’s auspicious to be launching the same week the Brat Pack finally gets their say. After everyone has had time to watch it (June 13 on Hulu), we’ll come back and analyze it here.
For the first couple installments of WNVM, we’re going BIG with a double feature — one story from each of us — because the ‘80s were big: big hair, big shoulders, big pants, and big attitudes. (Don’t worry, we will cover the ‘90s, too.) We really want readers to get a taste of our writing styles, interests, and beats. Then we’ll transition into a weekly single feature, supported by lists, recommendations, news, and more fun stuff.
First up, Cheryl has a profile of Violet Sky, a 23-year-old who has thoroughly committed to living like it’s the 1980s. Yes, that includes a giant perm and high top Reeboks. Two weeks after Cheryl interviewed her for this, Violet and some of her friends went viral on X/Twitter.
Next, Fawnia talks to Sarah Evelyn, the costume designer for The Fall Guy, helmed by Gen X-er David Leitch and now streaming on Prime. The Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt-starring action-comedy is absolutely stacked with ‘80s and ‘90s Easter eggs, from “Miami Vice” to, yes, Kurt Cobain.
Finally, stick around until the end for all the news “you oughta know” this week.
Back to the Future
Meet the 23-Year-Old Who Lives Like It’s 1985
By Cheryl
The neon signs glowed. Shannon’s “Let the Music Play” blared as people in hot pink and black lace skated around the wooden oval. I wore an oversized Madonna t-shirt. Soon, a singer in a polka dot tiered mini skirt and permed hair with waterfall bangs teased to the heavens sang a synth-pop confection. A tableau from 1984? Nope. It was April 2024 at a roller rink in New York’s Hudson Valley.
The singer is 23-year-old Violet Sky (she goes by her first and middle name only), known as Glitterwave80s on social media, where she has 84,000 followers on Instagram and over 308,000 on TikTok. Violet lives fully immersed in a Gen Z version of ‘80s life, 85% of her wardrobe thrifted from the era, and with a budding music career built on a dedication to keeping things as lo-fi and analog as possible, right down to the ‘80s-produced original music she sings.
“It was the last era that was like the perfect mix of technology and no technology. You could make music using real instruments and synthesizers at the same time,” Violet, who lives in Staten Island, says. “I connect with it so much because I love how outgoing [it was] and it was a decade of excess. Nothing's too big, nothing was too much. And I really admire that.”
Maybe this is Gen Z’s response to a decade of sans serif and millennial pink. Zoomers have been drawn to the ‘80s arguably since “Stranger Things.” Violet is part of a young community of ‘80s-philes that grew during the pandemic, as Jezebel chronicled in 2022. It felt like an escape into a candy-colored nostalgia that was worlds away from Covid and the toxicity of social media.
Violet’s mom is a baby boomer, so Violet didn’t absorb ‘80s culture by osmosis at home. She discovered the decade as a teen via the usual John Hughes movies, but became enamored with it after seeing a movie I am going to watch again as soon as possible: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, Shannen Doherty, and Helen Hunt.
Violet was drawn to the wardrobe and soundtracks of the movies she found. Soon after, she started an Instagram and began trying out the look in 2018 while still in high school. She’s fully committed and presents herself as someone circa 1985-1989 all the time. She got her first perm in 2020.
“I went to a local salon and they told me that the person who was going to be doing my hair was in their seventies. And I was like, great, they lived through the ‘80s, they did hair then, they know what I want!” Violet says.
But the hair stylist called out sick, so a 30-something gave her a subtler body wave instead. Now her mom’s hair stylist comes to the house and gives her a perm in her kitchen, “as they were always intended to be.” She told him, “I know a lot of people don’t want to [do] hair like this because people may regret it, but I promise you I will not.” She’s now on her fourth perm.
Getting the beauty and fashion right is important for the look’s authenticity. Violet takes beauty tips from the 1985 manual The Complete Beauty Book, via scanned and uploaded images on Instagram. She avoids liquid eye liner or anything too iridescent and modern. She thrifts most of her clothes from places like Depop, eBay, and Spark Pretty and L Train Vintage in NYC, searching for desirable period brands like Stefano International and Contempo Casuals (!!). Some of her clothes are new brands that have an ‘80s look, like her Vibrant MIU acid wash jeans. Classic Reebok Freestyle high tops are reliable go-tos. On her social media, she’s worked with classic brands like Blu Blockers, Esprit, LA Gear, and Members Only. She stages Polaroid photo shoots in old malls.
I was at the roller rink to relive my hormonal middle school skating party days, but also to watch Violet do her gig at the ‘80s prom-themed night. She had studied the business of the music industry in college. As part of her ‘80s research, she started finding rare and unreleased songs from movie soundtracks and obscure bands, working with the original artists to digitize and archive them on YouTube. She discovered one such band, Shy Talk, who only released one album, which wasn’t available on streaming at the time. The keyboardist, David Bravo (seen below with songwriter Alex Forbes), reached out to her, and it turns out he had unreleased music from the ‘80s that he had recorded. She partnered with him to record vocals over the original tracks and now performs them live.
I found it fascinating to hear what has resonated with her from the era. Along with freestyle and the mall queens like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, she’s also into some pretty deep cut ‘80s stuff. She named singers like Yvonne Murray on the Breaking All the Rules soundtrack, Holly Knight (also a prolific songwriter for the likes of Pat Benatar and Tina Turner whose memoir I’ve added to my list), and Alisha (specifically from the Mannequin soundtrack). Her favorite movies aren’t the obvious ones either: No Small Affair (Jon Cryer’s first film, with Demi Moore), Valet Girls (not to be confused with Valley Girls), and Perfect with Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta in some of the cringiest ‘80s fitness scenes ever filmed.
Violet didn’t experience the decade linearly and is not constrained by the lack of technology that those of us who lived through it the first time were. She can really deep dive and choose the art that speaks to her. It’s not a coincidence that two of the movies she mentioned to me are about aspiring singers. I have never heard of Shy Talk, because if it wasn’t played on the radio or in heavy rotation on MTV, there was no other way to be exposed to music. I’m a few years older than Fawnia, and I’m always surprised by how different our experiences of the ‘80s and ‘90s were, despite it still being an age of so-called monoculture. In a way, the ‘80s experience Violet built for herself is no less authentic and individualized. When she’s 53, her nostalgia is going to be for the ‘80s of her youth, just like mine is, and I think that’s pretty charming.
Obviously a lot of film and TV from the ‘80s has problematic themes and lacks diversity and inclusivity when viewed through a modern lens. I asked Violet how she wrestles with it.
“As a part of the LGBTQ community — I'm a lesbian — really acknowledging the struggles of that era is just so, so important. That's one of the reasons why I never really say I wish I lived in the ’80s, because I really don't know what it was like to exist as a person of a marginalized group back then at all,” she says. “I think it's really important to acknowledge that the era was not perfect and to really sit down and talk about these things and how we can not repeat them in this generation. So mostly I focus on the hair and the fashion and everything.”
I asked Violet where she hopes to be in two years. She is trying to make a go of it with her music and her archiving and her social media presence. But she is also pretty down-to-earth about it all and works a day job, too. “Currently I work at a pizzeria. It's very Mystic Pizza, I’d like to think!”
Free Fallin’
All the ‘80s (and a ‘90s) Easter Eggs in The Fall Guy Outfits
By Fawnia
You can now watch the Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt-starring The Fall Guy streaming on Prime from the comfort of your own home. Plus, enjoy bathroom/snack breaks, at your leisure, for an extended 20 minutes of pure fun during director David Leitch’s love letter to Hollywood’s unsung stunt team heroes. I, however, hightailed it opening weekend to my favorite theater, Nitehawk, to experience the many laughs and high-octane action with a full house — including the Gen X-er next to me, who may be my childhood TV soul mate.
“Emily’s Hawaiian shirt!! That's Magnum, PI!!” he kinda shrieked in excitement, after all the cameo-filled credits concluded. We proceeded to debrief through all the nods to the “The Fall Guy” television show creator Glen A. Larson’s 1980s oeuvre, which is probably another story. (I also ended up buying the movie on Prime.)
“The Hawaiian shirts were definitely a nod to the ‘80s,” confirms The Fall Guy costume designer Sarah Evelyn, who also visited the decade for Netflix’s “Griselda.” She even lent her own red H&M Hawaiian shirt for the comedically savage sequence when director Jody Moreno (Blunt) mistakes her ex, stuntman and everyman hero Colt Seavers (Gosling), for an intruder. Jody unleashes her own stellar fighting skills to pummel a disguised Colt, as her shirt floats about like a superhero cape.
“[The shirt] felt right because it looks like action heroes we grew up with,” says Evelyn, explaining that the Tom Selleck-reminiscent piece helped Blunt “find the character” in that action scene. But it also represents looking back at the pantheon of ‘80s legends of mostly, pretty much all, cishet white men, through today’s lens. “I just wish at that time there'd also been [more] women who were ‘Magnum, PI,’ like a more diverse [group of] heroes.”
Of course, the O.G. “Charlie’s Angels” solved cases, while looking fabulous on the small-screen from 1976 to 1981. One of their late-’70s wardrobe staples also provided some inspiration for the pink Wrangler jumpsuit that Jody wears to direct a heart-pumping car chase, and literally set Colt on fire, multiple times. “There was also the Greta Gerwig nod,” says Evelyn, referencing the Barbie director causing a spike in pink jumpsuit sales, while saving the movie industry last year. “A lot of these [nods] went on two levels.”
Evelyn also inventively mashed up a bunch of references for the gold-outfitted Space Cowboy, played by egomaniac action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson), in Jody’s directorial debut, Metalstorm. The epic sci-fi/romance movie-within-a-movie looks kinda like Dune-meets-Mad Max — and shares the title of an actual 1983 cult film. Evelyn’s research began with a litany of space-traveling fare, including 2013 documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, Larson’s late-’70s series “Battlestar Galactica,” and, obviously, Star Wars. “It influenced so much of that genre," says Evelyn, about the original trilogy spanning 1977 to 1983. “That's like sci-fi cave drawings.”
A scrapped plot line centered around the godfathers of glam hard rock, KISS, led Evelyn down another late-’70s/early-’80s rabbit hole to infuse some rock ‘n’ roll fashun. (Or maybe what’s now deemed “Y3K aesthetic,” which I had to watch a bunch of TikToks to truly understand.) She came across fashion designer Larry LeGaspi, who dreamt up avant garde, space age-y performance costumes for KISS, Grace Jones and Afro-futurist musician George Clinton. His futuristic aesthetic, and affinity for metallic details, also influenced goth-glam king Rick Owens. “Space Cowboy’s vest has that leather piping on it, and that was very Larry LeGaspi,” says Evelyn, who also sprinkled in ‘80s-era Bruce Springsteen for a dash of Americana working man hero.
Reverence for another Gen X music legend also pops up on Johnson’s unhinged Tom Ryder, whose drug-fueled bender leads to Colt’s action-packed misadventures. To emphasize Tom’s douche-bro send up of a Hollywood superstar, Johnson and Evelyn landed on “a Kurt Cobain vibe” — but with a caveat. “It has to be something where [Tom] had seen Kurt Cobain, and was copying him because obviously, it was not an authentic Kurt Cobain situation,” says Evelyn. Tom’s white Illesteva sunglasses, worn inside a dark party — and at night, with an Adidas tracksuit lol — hark to the Nirvana frontman’s Christian Roth 6558 sunnies worn for a celebrated 1993 series by photographer Jesse Frohman.
But reflecting a true blue ‘80s mindset, Evelyn leaned into graphic t-shirts for the stunt artists (or actors playing them). “In the ‘80s you’d wear a t-shirt because you legitimately had it and you’d wear it with all seriousness,” says Evelyn. “Like, you didn't go to the vintage store to find a t-shirt that you felt would be cool.” (Ouch, I feel seen.) So, Colt’s friend and Metalstorm stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke) vanquishes baddies in a Deus Ex Machina motorcycle tee.
One particular t-shirt, custom built by Evelyn’s team, also pays homage to stunt artists, who are part of SAG-AFTRA, and the hard-working crews of the entertainment union IATSE. Colt wears a red, white and blue graphic tee for a very “The A-Team”-referential car chase through the streets of Sydney, backed by francophile good boy Jean-Claude Van Damme (the dog, not the actor). Gosling’s stylist and costumer Mark Avery designed the shirt, with a can’t-miss IATSE logo on the front, and #UnionStrong on the sleeves — a pretty moving show of support during ongoing negotiations with studios.
But Colt’s “Miami Vice Stunt Team” bomber jacket, with the immediately recognizable pastel pink and blue font, offers even deeper meaning, and most of all to former stunt coordinator Leitch. “Mark and Ryan started doing character research, and they found that jacket on eBay, which was brilliant,” says Evelyn, about Colt’s jacket saved from his days working at the theme park stunt show, which is a common career path in real life.
Call it kismet, but Leitch actually auditioned for the Waterworld stunt show, which replaced the “Miami Vice Action Spectacular” at Universal Studios in 1995. “When they found that jacket, all of us knew we could not give up on it,” adds Evelyn. Getting that legal clearance to use the “Miami Vice” logo proved a real effort that required Leitch and producer (and wife) Kelly McCormick jumping in.
The jacket then inspired a sequence — close to my own “Miami Vice”-loving heart — when Colt jumps, Crockett and Tubbs-style, into a speedboat, soundtracked by Jan Hammer’s “Miami Vice” theme song. And, yup, that’s still a banger — especially considering how loudly my X-er seatmate and I yelped when the perennially catchy percussion beats and very ‘80s synth kicked off yet another adrenaline-fueled chase.
You Oughta Know
Justice for J. Lo! Honestly, why do the public (and media) get so gleeful when the multihyphenate encounters personal/professional challenges? We have some thoughts, and so does this editor, who bought a ticket to her now-canceled concert tour. (The Daily Beast)
The excellent Peacock series “We Are Lady Parts” dropped its soundtrack with the headlining Muslim, all-women punk band covering Gen X faves, like “9 to 5” and Radiohead’s “Creep,” and singing original bangers, like Fawnia’s new anthem, “Villain Era.” (Spotify)
The documentary + tour formula must be working for some musicians. “LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza” just dropped, and, probably not coincidentally, Jane’s Addiction is going out on tour this summer. Cyndi Lauper just announced a doc and “farewell” tour, too. (ParamountPlus, Stereogum)
There is a “Fresh Prince” makeup collection, featuring acid neon eye shadow palettes, lashes housed in boxes that look like cassette tapes, and microphone-shaped lip gloss that talk show host Hilary Banks would have collected. (Glamlite)