As a junior high student in the middle-1980s I knew very little about fashion.
Sure I understood that Ocean Pacific clearly made you cool, but beyond that and some tidbits about which jeans I needed mu mom to buy for me I was pretty clueless. Because of that, like so many other young teenagers of the time, I went through a brief period where I decided that dressing vaguely like Don Johnson from Miami Vice was the way to go in eighth grade.
I could sort of pull off the perma-tan, but aside from that I was as far from the then icon of cool as could be imagined. As a skinny, mildly pimply suburban white kid growing up near Boston, it was as plausible for me to base my look on Patrick Ewing as it was Johnson.
This did not stop me from rocking the T-shirt pastel suit jacket look. It also convinced me that a look I’m not actually sure Johnson ever wore was a great idea. This led to me asking for and receiving both a black leather skinny tie and a pink, knit skinnyish tie. Of course, both were worn with an unbuttoned dress shirt and jeans.
To say this was not an acceptable junior high school look would be putting it mildly. I look like a cross between Avril Lavigne and Ernie from Sesame Street — a duo few people could pull off successfully.
While these ties may have worked fine for a Billy Squier video or even with a suit at one of the many, many Bar and Bat Mitzvahs I attended, it was certainly not a wear-to-school look. Fortunately, I went to a school where the bullies were equally as confused as I was (were they supposed to act like mob lackeys? Evil frat boys? Bad ass football players? so I mostly escaped torment.
