The phrase jumpsuit was first used to describe the one piece overall worn by skydivers and parachutists, but over the years it has become the term used to describe any item of clothing which has a one piece design for covering both arms and legs. They normally, though not exclusively, fasten up at the front of the body.

Whilst jumpsuits are worn by pilots and racing car drivers for safety reasons, the popularity of them as an item of clothing for every day wear can most likely be attributed to pop stars, starting back in the Fifties and Sixties with Elvis Presley of course, but other notable wearers of these clothes in the 1980’s include Freddie Mercury and Suzi Quatro.

It appears the popularity of the Jumpsuit was on the rise again earlier this year, and indeed many of the fashion websites are, at the time of writing this, still selling jumpsuits of various designs, including one off shoot known as the Playsuit. As far as I can tell this is a jump suit with the legs cut off. Fine, if you like that sort of thing, but I do think they could have come up with a better name for them. I can’t help feeling that Playsuit sounds distinctly seedy…

One such fad fashion accessory popular in the late Eighties was the Slap Bracelet (also sometimes known as Snap Bracelet), which became a craze that both girls and boys got caught up in, though for possibly different reasons.

The Slap Bracelet consisted of a piece of springy metal wrapped in fabric. It could be straightened out into a long thin rectangle, and then wrapped around the wrist (or any other item for that matter) simply by flicking it sharply at it. On contact the springs would coil the bracelet around your wrist, making it fit perfectly.

For girls the Slap Bracelet was seen as a cool new fashion item. It was available in many different colours and designs, and most importantly was cheap, so you could have a whole collection of them to co-ordinate with your wardrobe.

For boys however the appeal was probably more in the snappy action of the bracelet. Boys being boys, the act of performing the slapping action tended to get a bit over zealous, and so it wasn’t long before schools across the land started banning the Slap Bracelet. I don’t know if anybody was ever badly injured by one of them (I wouldn’t have thought so) but I’m sure there were more than a few instances of slightly smarting arms, wrists and other bodily parts.

I think we loved and hated those trips in equal measure. Of course there were the good shops (i.e. toy shops and for me, computer game shops) that we got to look around as well, but the biggest part of the trip was going round the various clothes shops, which at that time usually included a visit to C&A.

C&A was a huge shop selling clothes for every possible member of the family, from babies through to grandparents, so it always seemed an extra long trawl as you had to negotiate the racks and racks of women’s clothes, up the escalator to get to the children’s clothes.

Then we’d try to find something both ourselves and our parents liked, and which the shop also had in the correct size, then go and try them on (hopefully in the changing rooms, though there was the odd indignity of having to try something on in the shop itself) before then taking the items to the till to pay and have the giant security discs removed.

A clothes shopping trip that didn’t included a trip to C&A’s therefore often felt like something was missing, so when the chain disappeared from the UK high street it felt a little bit sad, a bit like when Woolworths ceased trading in more recent times.

The last UK branch of C&A closed in 2001, and as far as I was concerned that was that, so I was slightly surprised when I happened to go to Germany and discovered C&A was still a going concern. Indeed, they are still trading throughout most of mainland Europe.

C&A was originally formed in 1841 by brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer (hmm, wonder where the C&A name came from then) as a Dutch textiles company. The first UK store opened in 1922, and the chain became known for their good quality but budget clothing ranges being sold in generally very large town centre shops.

So why did the company leave the UK? Well, they started to get squeezed out of the market, with the rise of new out of town clothes stores such as Matalan, and due to supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s stocking a wider range of similar types of clothing in their stores. The costs of running town centre shops meant C&A couldn’t compete, so it was either withdraw or invest in further out of town shops themselves. In the end the first option was more cost effective.

If your interested though, take a look at the C&A website for their current range of clothing. You’ll see that they still have the same old logo, which used to adorn the push panels of the doors in most of the branches.

Moon Boots were first created by Italian company Tecnica in the early Seventies, but it wasn’t until the Eighties that they really took the fashion world by storm.

They were originally designed as a highly practical shoe for use in snowy conditions, as they are waterproof, warm, and easy to slip on and off. Unlike most shoes they don’t come as a traditional left and right pair. Either boot can go on either foot.

The boots have a rubber sole made in two parts, a thin rubber outer layer, and a thicker cellular layer to cushion the feet. The shoe itself is often made from a polyester material, giving the boots that spacesuit like quality, but suede and fake furry versions are also available, though these tend to look more like a normal boot.

Laces cover the top of the foot before criss-crossing round the back of the leg to be tied up at the front near the top of the boot, which helps to keep the boots on when trudging about in thick snow.

The Moon Boot logo, written in a style that wouldn’t be out of place on Space 1999, adorns the side of the boot, so you can easily tell a proper pair from an imitation.

One such fashion statement was the craze for wearing Terry Towelling sports socks (in either standard white or a range of neon colours) as every day socks, which is something I’ve covered here before.

Another piece of Terry Towelling apparel that became popular was the sweatband. Sportsmen and women wore them (particularly tennis players as I recall) as they served a useful purpose, but for some reason they suddenly became the in-thing to wear normally.

Whilst some went the whole hog and wore a head sweatband, most toned it down a bit and went for one of the wrist ones, which quite often had the name of a football team too.

I’m not quite sure why these became so popular, but my best guess is because of Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, who famously wore a rather illuminated neon one in the video for Money for Nothing (in fact that was all you could see, as his face was blacked out in the video).

I wonder how long it will take for this particular fashion to resurge? I’m guessing it might be a while, but who knows?

I’m not sure if they first appeared in the Eighties or perhaps earlier, but I distinctly remember trainers appearing that were fastened by Velcro and immediately on seeing them I wanted a pair. After all, who wanted to mess about with laces, which kept coming undone, when you could slip on your trainers and have them fastened in seconds?

Eventually I got a pair, once we had managed to locate a pair that were reasonably priced as most of the initial versions were made by the big names in trainers and so had price tags which my Mum wasn’t prepared to pay (and to be honest I can’t say I blame her either).

I forget which manufacturer made my pair of trainers (they were probably unbranded ones to be honest, a sort of shoe shops own brand) but I did love them dearly. They were dark blue in colour and the Velcro fastener consisted of a U shaped strap which was fed through two oblong metal rivets. You just needed to pop in your foot, pull over the strap and push it down and you were done. Brilliantly simple!

Whilst Velcro trainers are still available today (as are Velcro fastening shoes for that matter) you don’t tend to see them about quite as much these days for adults, though for kids they are still very popular given that young children can find tying laces pretty tricky.

I wonder how appealing they would have found them had they known a little more about their history though?

Dr. Marten was actually a real doctor believe it or not! Klaus Märtens was a doctor in the German army during World War II. Whilst on leave he was enjoying a spot of skiing when he fell and hurt is ankle. He found his standard issue army boots very uncomfortable with his injury, and set about making a few changes to the boots design in an effort to ease his aching feet a little. Softer leather was one change, and another was to add an air-cushioned sole.

After the war Märtens decided to go into business manufacturing his new boot design, and they proved highly successful, albeit with housewives over the age of 40! The company did well, and in 1960 the boots arrived in the UK, when British show manufacturer R. Griggs licensed the rights to make the boots for the British market. They made a few tweaks, such as reshaping the heel and changing the stitching colour to yellow, and they also named the soles AirWair, a name which became synonymous with the Dr. Martens brand.

The classic Dr. Marten boot design is known rather uninspiringly as the 1460. Black is probably the colour you would first think of, although the original release of the boots actually used red leather. These days the boots are available in a wide range of colours and also a number of very interesting designs such as polka dots or even Hello Kitty themed ones, complete with a little bow on the side!

The brand is also by no means limited to just this boot style, and you can buy both mens and ladies styles in shoes, sandals and various other boot styles as well.

Back when I were a lad though, it would have been more likely to be a holdall style bag (or possibly a leather (or leather effect) satchel when you first started school – I bet they’re hard to track down now). For the girls this would probably have been pink or another girly colour, possibly with a picture of a horse or pony, whilst for the boys it would have undoubtedly been a football team bag, not dissimilar in style to that shown above, which is actually a currently available retro styled bag.

Now, I was never really into football. Sure, I had the odd kick about but since my Dad wasn’t a footie fan he never passed it on to me like many father’s do to their sons. When I first started going to school though, I suddenly discovered that most boys were big football fans, so in an effort to try and fit in I thought I had better start to show an interest too.

Most of the boys at my primary school would have had a holdall with their favourite football teams name on (and perhaps a picture of a footballer, a football or the clubs emblem). Most were also colour coded to the chosen team’s football strip as well.

I remember bugging my Mum for a football team bag, so out we went one Saturday to try and find one. In the end I chose one I liked, which as it happened was a West Ham one, with said picture of a footballer, WEST HAM printed on the side and made from purpley-maroonish coloured fabric. To be honest I didn’t even know West Ham was a football team at this point.

Proudly I went to school on Monday morning, pleased with my new bag, but by the time I came home that afternoon I was perhaps a little dejected. This was when I discovered just how loyal males can be to their football team, and after a day of being asked “Do you support West Ham?” by just about every boy in the school playground, I think I secretly wanted to accidentally-on-purpose lose the damn thing.

I started off wondering what “supporting West Ham” meant? Don’t forget that in our house footie was turned off as soon as it came on the TV, so this was a new concept to me. By the end of play time I realised that there was no correct answer to that question, at least not for me. Answer “Yes” and I was invariably laughed at and told they were rubbish (I’ve no idea whether this was true or not at the time) but answer “No” and I got the obvious follow up question, “Then why have you got a West Ham bag?”.

This experience might have left me with a little mental scar, but it did at least teach me that I shouldn’t worry about trying to please others, and that I should only display my loyalty to something if I really and truly did like it! And with that rather US sit-com style end summary, it only leaves me left to ask, what kind of school bag did you have?