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"  After the fact, a great deal of fashion screams &amp;quot;What were we thinking!&amp;quot;, and this is particularly true, I think, of the clothes we wore in the 80s. So guess what&amp;#039;s back? Huge shoulder pads, neon, harem pants, cinched waists. Which leads me to ask, &amp;quot;What are they [the collective fashion industry] thinking?&amp;quot;   Perhaps the young will take to these styles, in the time-old manner in which they adopt what&amp;#039;s come before as their own, blissfully ignoring, or not even knowing, that it had a previous life. (A woman I know once told how her teenage son caught her singing along to &amp;quot;Satisfaction&amp;quot; and said, &amp;quot;Wow! Mom! You know the Rolling Stones!&amp;quot;) But I&amp;#039;ll believe it only when I see 20-somethings on the street looking every bit as ridiculous as I now know I looked when I wore those styles, which were themselves reincarnated\u2014and greatly exaggerated\u2014from the 40s (which also are back).   As easy a target as the fashion industry is (&amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t they make clothes for real women?&amp;quot; and so forth), I wouldn&amp;#039;t want their jobs. My sympathy comes in no small part from my own experiences in trying to sell a magazine. To be blunt, it&amp;#039;s tough. You adore chocolate, but chocolate covers tend not to sell (really). You indicate you&amp;#039;re tired of the same old &amp;quot;get organized/lose weight/lose 10 pounds&amp;quot; lines on our covers, but guess which ones vastly outperform anything new and fresh? We love you, Ms. American Consumer, especially when you plunk down your cash for our product, but you&amp;#039;re not always easy to figure out or please.   With fashion, most of us develop a personal style at some point that&amp;#039;s quite separate from whatever the look of the moment is. I&amp;#039;m still wearing, and getting compliments on, clothes I bought 10 years ago, which is good for my bottom line but not those of clothing companies. And lots and lots of companies do sell clothes for the so-called &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; woman. The problem is, those clothes tend to be the basics that most of us wear most of the time: extraordinarily useful but boring items that aren&amp;#039;t exactly going to catch our eyes in a store. And even if they do, how many black pants/black turtlenecks/white shirts, to name a few of my oft-worn items, do I need?   So the fashion industry tries to get our attention with something different, which generally means\u2014and what I&amp;#039;m about to say will mark me clearly as not a fashionista\u2014a recycled version of something that&amp;#039;s come before. If it so happens that you loved the previous incarnation (my favorite is Jackie Kennedy&amp;#039;s look), then you&amp;#039;re happy and you just may go shopping. If not, you start up the pity party on how there&amp;#039;s nothing to buy in the stores.   My closet is looking a little boring these days, and it&amp;#039;s about time for me to head out and make the rounds of a few favorite stores. If past experience is any guide, I&amp;#039;ll walk around floor after floor, try on a few things\u2014and find nothing. And if I&amp;#039;m truly honest with myself, I&amp;#039;ll admit that the fault for that isn&amp;#039;t just with the fashion industry. Even if I&amp;#039;m not an &amp;#039;80s girl at all. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/style/fashion/a4151/the-editors-corner-fashion-flashbacks-86720/>