From Shy Di’s Sloane Ranger look to Baywatch and bubble perms, it was the decade taste forgot but... Aaaargh! The awful 80s are back

Our host popped the cork on another bottle of Moet as the chit-chat moved onto tax-avoiding fat cats, property prices and that ‘damn trouble with Europe’.

Close your eyes and you could have been at a dinner party in 1985. Open them, and there wasn’t much difference, either.

My friend was attempting to carry off a blouse with a frilled pie-crust collar, while her 17-year-old daughter stomped into the room in high-waisted baggy jeans, a slogan T-shirt and a mop of curly hair. She looked like she was going to a fancy dress party as George Michael in his Wham! heyday.

Yes, the Eighties are back.

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It used to be that trends had a 50-year life cycle - but it seems that Eighties style is back in fashion. Pictured: Lady Diana Spencer wearing a frilled pie-crust collar in 1981

What with ra-ra skirts, shag pile rugs, cheese plants, conspicuous consumption of bubbly and package holidays to Lanzarote (the last thanks to David Cameron) all back in vogue, you’d be forgiven for thinking the past 30 years never happened.

This is particularly confusing for anyone who can remember the Eighties as if they were yesterday. For me, it was a decade of permanent adolescent angst and really bad hair. Why on earth would anyone want to bring that back?

It used to be that trends had a 50-year life cycle - back in 1937 fashion historian James Laver drew up a timeline of the rise and fall and rise again of trends. He suggested that a trend would not catch on again until half a century after it first became popular.

But with the fashion industry hungrily chewing up and spitting out trends and the internet spreading them like wildfire, the pace has quickened. So it’s back to the Eighties... yah!

RETURN OF THE SLOANE

Remember Fergie and Lady Di larking around with their posh chums on the Kings Road? Well, the Sloane Ranger is fashion’s most unlikely new icon. 

Marks & Spencer, Warehouse, H&M and Zara are all selling pie-crust collars, full, midi skirts and floaty floral tea-dresses (think Shy Di in her pre-engagement days, photographed with the sun behind her skirt).

Marks & Spencer, Warehouse, H&M and Zara are all selling pie-crust collars, full, midi skirts and floaty floral tea-dresses. Pictured: Alexa Chung for M&S

Chanel has started a trend for Alice bands with giant bows and Yves Saint Laurent paraded giant shoulder pads and ra-ra skirts on its catwalk in March... it’ll filter onto the High Street within weeks.

If Sloanes don’t float your boat, you could always channel that other Eighties icon - Jennifer Grey as Baby from Dirty Dancing. 

Body suits (remember those damned poppers?) leggings and slogan T-shirts are all back with a vengeance at H&M and asos.com.

BAYWATCH, BUT NO PAM!

Eighties Saturday afternoon TV favourite Baywatch will be back in film form next year with a cast as fabulously well-muscled and D-list as the original (pictured: American Baywatch star and sex-symbol Pamela Anderson)

Eighties Saturday afternoon TV favourite Baywatch will be back in film form next year with a cast as fabulously well-muscled and D-list as the original.

Busty blonde model Kelly Rohrbach (no, I haven’t heard of her either) is taking on Pamela Anderson’s role as C. J. Parker, while Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s pumped-up, spray-tanned chest makes David Hasselhoff look weedy. 

Busty blonde model Kelly Rohrbach is taking on Anderson’s role as C. J. Parker in Baywatch

Top Gun is also being remade (no one knows why).

And every other Eighties act is back on the road, it seems.

This summer you can catch The Human League, ABC and Cyndi Lauper, among others, across the country.

A WHIRL FOR CURLS 

When Kylie Minogue stepped out with a shaggy hairdo (as seen in The Mail last month) painfully reminiscent of her character Charlene’s frizzy mop in Neighbours, it confirmed my worst fears: Eighties perms are back.

Kylie Minogue recently stepped out with a shaggy hairdo (right) painfully reminiscent of her character Charlene’s frizzy mop in Neighbours (left)

Other Eighties hair trends making an unwelcome re-appearance are the peroxide bob - as seen on pop princess Taylor Swift - and Cyndi Lauper-style pink locks, now available in wash-out dyes at Boots and set to pop up at this summer’s festivals.

On the beauty front, blue eyeshadow has been seen on the Chanel and Diane Von Furstenburg catwalks, while models at the Yves St Laurent show looked eerily similar to Robert Palmer’s backing singers, with slicked back hair and scarlet lips.

And after decades of smaller and smaller phones, now many of them have gone all Gordon Gekko plus-size again

SAY SWISS CHEESE 

It seemed like every student flat had a Swiss cheese plant (with holes in the leaves similar to a slab of Emmental) wilting in a pot back then. Well, the magazine Architectural Digest calls it ‘one of the biggest interiors trends of 2016’.

Minimalism is being replaced by trends such as patterned wallpaper, wild floral fabrics and Native American dreamcatchers suspended from ceilings, doors and cupboards.

Whopping ghetto blasters have been seen recently in chi-chi interiors magazines - except now the boombox will connect to your smartphone and have built-in Bluetooth technology (Steepletone, £69.99). 

And after decades of smaller and smaller phones, now many of them have gone all Gordon Gekko plus-size again (the iPhone 6s Plus has a man-size 5.5-in screen).

THE FIZZ IS FLOWING 

Austerity? What Austerity? Loadsamoney is still sloshing around the swankiest bars and champagne is back at the top of the menu - sales have risen every year since the recession.

We glug 33 million bottles of it a year (we are still the biggest import market for champers) and UK sales of sparkling wine are expected to rise by 13 per cent over the next three years.

Crazy cocktails have also made a comeback - with umbrellas, dry ice and that dreadful passion-killing orange-flavoured liqueur Curacao which turned teeth blue. The only thing missing is Tom Cruise behind the bar.

TALKING TRUMP 

Starter for ten, who said this: ‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.’

Was it a) Michael Gove in 2016 or b) Margaret Thatcher in 1988?

It was, of course, a brilliantly prescient Thatcher piling into a debate that is once again raging over kitchen islands in the suburbs, almost 30 years on.

Donald Trump - that figurehead of Eighties excess with his blingy wives and unfettered arrogance - could become the next U.S. President

Other great Eighties dinner-party discussions making a comeback include where to book that a package holiday in the Canary Islands - they are back in vogue thanks to David Cameron putting his seal of approval on Lanzarote (though it was a suite in a five-star hotel with six swimming pools, a buffet breakfast and wifi, not exactly your average Eighties concrete block).

Then there are property prices. In the Eighties we rubbed our hands with glee at rising prices, now we moan that the kids can’t get on the housing ladder (but check out the soaring value of our homes).

And finally, Donald Trump - that figurehead of Eighties excess with his blingy wives and unfettered arrogance - could become the next U.S. President.