1980s fashion, Arcade-core and retro gaming: how 80s style influences luxury brands, streetwear, Vaporwave and digital culture today
This article is part of our special editorial series celebrating the 90th anniversary of Istituto Marangoni. In this chapter, we explore how the 1980s arcade game aesthetic is experiencing a significant resurgence, with fashion brands incorporating gaming elements into their collections and embracing it as a retail strategy to engage with new communities and the next generation of consumers.
The video game culture of the 1980s is thriving in modern iterations of the Arcade. Luxury brands have opened immersive stores, cafés and museums on platforms like Roblox, while iconic pillars of 1980s fashion are making a comeback in fashion collections.
80s Nostalgia: How Arcades Shaped Fashion, Music and Pop Culture
Being young in the 1980s was challenging without the Internet, but one major perk was the opportunity to hang out at your local Arcade, where you could challenge your friends to games like Zelda, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong.
Arcades were more than just gaming halls; they were the go-to places to spend the coins you earned by running small errands during the summer. In Tokyo, the popularity of Space Invaders became so immense that the government even declared a shortage of 1-Yen coins in the 1980s.
1980s Fashion Comeback: From Arcades to 8-Bit Style
The vibrant atmosphere of Arcades has resurged many times over the decades. While the 1990s still felt like a continuation of the 1980s, the decade has continued to resurface in culture, fashion and music, emerging as a defining phenomenon from the 2000s onwards.
TV series like Stranger Things have recently revived the nostalgia for Arcade games, while live-action movies featuring characters like Mario and Sonic have hit cinemas.
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Highlights from Super Moschino collection, celebrating 30 years of Super Mario Bros
Fashion brands have embraced nostalgia for iconic characters and atmospheres from the past. In 2015, under the guidance of Jeremy Scott, Moschino celebrated the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Bros with the Super Moschino collection, partnering with Nintendo.
This year, kids’ fashion brand Justice released a Pac-Man collection in collaboration with Bandai Namco Entertainment, following in the footsteps of Champion in 2020 and DSQUARED2 in 2023.
#PACMANXD2 Capsule Collection by Dsquared payed homage to the Pac-Man pixel world
However, capturing the essence of the 1980s vibes goes beyond simply placing a retro gaming character on a T-shirt or adding a Fortnite logo to a $1,290 denim jacket, as Balenciaga did. It’s about interpreting styles that defined that decade and making them relevant today.
Why Luxury Brands Enter Video Games Like Fortnite and Roblox
In recent years, many fashion brands have started flirting with the gaming industry: Louis Vuitton enlisted a Final Fantasy character for a fashion campaign; Balenciaga, Ralph Lauren, and Moncler, among others, designed Fortnite skins; and The Sims characters could wear outfits from Gucci.
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Qiyana in Louis Vuitton skin for League of Legends, designed by Nicolas Ghesquière
Those collabs also serve as merch and capsules for the brands’ established audiences. A notable example is the Louis Vuitton x League of Legends, designed by Nicolas Ghesquière and released in late 2019 as both a virtual and IRL collection.
“Companies want to be where the consumers are. It’s as simple as that. The games industry has grown very fast, it has surpassed Hollywood. Traditional marketing has evolved. Twenty years ago, TV advertising was everything, but I have two teenagers at home who don’t watch TV. Your consumer is in video games right now,” said Federico San Martin, director of Minecraft partnerships and licensing, in an interview with The Guardian.
Game designers and 3D developers game designers and 3D developers are becoming more and more of a staple hire for luxury brands that aim to speak to new customers in their own slang and codes.
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High fashion meets gaming in iconic brand collaborations across titles like Fortnite, The Sims, and League of Legends
Many luxury fashion brands jumped on Roblox and Fortnite as a way to create virtual collections and skins for avatars. This strategy allows them to reach a new audience by showcasing not only their products and accessories but also concepts and attitudes. For example, Gucci brought millions of guests to enjoy its virtual Gucci Garden, recognising that a 25-year-old living in Taipei, Cape Town, or Lima has likely never been to Florence and may not plan to visit anytime soon.
Sometimes the gaming environment serves as a unique platform for hosting virtual events that would be difficult or impossible to manage in real life, often featuring international artists. Despite being virtual, these events offer real access and entertainment for participants.
Travis Scott’s 2020 Fortnite concert, which drew a staggering 12.3 million viewers stuck at home during the pandemic, set a high standard for branded content within the gaming industry. This event not only provided access to virtual Air Jordans and skins but also represented a significant intersection of gaming and fashion on a massive scale.
Vaporwave Style: 80s Gaming Codes in Fashion and Art
1980s video game design has left a mark on both fashion and art. From pixel art to cyberpunk grids, RGB colour palettes, and glitchy graphics, we can find traces of retro gaming nostalgia in contemporary collections and designs.
The dark mode with neon green from early Atari games and pixelated fonts are a nod to the first Arcade video games of the 1980s, like Asteroids and Pong. As the rise of the Metaverse the rise of the Metaverse has reinvigorated the concept of cyberspace—a fascination that began in the Eighties with the release of films like Tron and Shadowrun, grid and vector designs have re-emerged as a popular style.
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"THE BUMPER" by JW ANDERSON embodies aesthetic codes of the retro gaming nostalgia
Among all retro gaming trends, Vaporwave best captures the spirit of the 1980s. Emerging as an electronic music style in the 2010s, Vaporwave has also expanded into the visual arts, incorporating various 80s gaming references such as glitches, cyberpunk design, and neon colours.
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Moschino’s bold, glitch-inspired outfits channel Vaporwave and 80s gaming nostalgia
Vaporwave started as a parody during the social media era. Today, when used as a style in fashion and design, it often carries a sense of irony and ambiguity rather than sincere nostalgia. Moschino, along with brands like Nike and Louis Vuitton, went full Vaporwave in 2019 when it partnered with The Sims.
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Arcade-ready looks from the Moschino x The Sims collab
The Return of 1980s Style in Streetwear, Luxury and Digital Culture
For its Spring 2023 collection, Loewe created textiles to achieve an 8-bit style on T-shirts, jeans and the iconic Puzzle bag. To match the creative idea, the Loewe logo on shopping bags was pixelated.
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Loewe’s surreal pixel bag blurs fashion and gaming aesthetics
Lacoste pixelated its logo and iconic design while partnering with Minecraft.
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Lacoste fuses gaming and fashion with Minecraft-themed streetwear
Contemporary art and craftsmanship are also embracing glitches and pixels; designer Ferruccio Laviani is successfully making us love both with his furniture.
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Hand-carved cabinet mimics a computer glitch in Laviani’s digital-meets-craft series
Gaia Giordani
Editor, Generative AI Explorer and New Media Communication Expert