With sculptural dresses storming down the runway at Balmain, Kendall Jenner styling out an 80s-style power suit at Paris Fashion Week and Pinterest declaring the 80s as a major inspiration behind its Make It Big trend prediction, it looks like it’s time to retire our grungy low-waisted jeans and slicked-back hair. The 80s are your new wardrobe inspiration. 

And Joan, a new six-part ITV thriller starring Sophie Turner, is here to confirm that. Set to the backdrop of 1980s London, the series is inspired by the life of the real Joan Hannington – a notorious jewellery thief, known as the godmother of London’s criminal underworld. 

The drama is steeped in the sculptural suits, opulent jewels and edgy bobs (and less edgy, very bouffanty blow-drys) that have become synonymous with the decade. But why is it having a moment in 2024? 

Glamorous representations of the 80s in films like American Psycho and iconic TV series like Dallas have meant we remember the decade as a time of power, desire and excess. The infamous mantra “greed is good”, as spoken by Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, is still seen as a defining sentiment of the time. A recent survey found that seven out of 10 Brits believe that life in the UK is tougher today than it has been for many years, so it’s little surprise that we might be looking to adopt the style of a time when everything felt bigger and better, from our shoulder pads to our wallets.

But it’s not just about the glamour and prosperity. The 80s were a time when change felt possible. More women were in management positions than ever before and new technologies such as the mobile phone opened up new lines of communication. Throughout the series, Joan herself undergoes a significant transformation symbolic of the wider social and economic change happening in the 80s. When we first see her, she has escaped a violent relationship and is in the process of losing custody of her daughter, but we see her transform, through ill-gotten means, into a wealthy woman in charge of her own destiny. 

“When we first see her, she’s very provincial,” says the show’s costume designer Richard Cooke, adding that the fashion layers he adds to her persona were “about creating armour, something to protect herself”.

Perhaps our adoption of 80s aesthetics isn’t just a means of escaping our circumstances; it’s an attempt to transform them, too. Women in the UK bore the brunt of the pandemic, with many losing or dropping out of work alongside juggling childcare and taking on homeschooling responsibilities – and women are still more likely than men to say that gender inequality is still a major concern for them.

Women still face many of the same challenges today as women like Joan did back then. In the 80s, power dressing wasn’t just an aesthetic choice; it was a means of asserting authority by physically taking up more space in a male-dominated world. At a time when women are still facing discrimination, it’s no wonder we’re drawing on the glamorous silhouettes of the 80s to reassert our own power and project confidence. 

Watch Joan on ITV on Sunday 29 September at 9pm

Images: ITV