Jay Marks posted in the BBAK Facebook Group in January 2019, inferring that the 1980s look might have been a little more aesthetically pleasing than the 1970s look. That remark kicked off some lively debate.
As it happens, Jay became BBYO National President on 1 January 1980, so methinks Jay might have been alluding to this fact and trying to take some credit for a change…
…in his opinion improvement…
…in style or looks between 31 December 1979 and 1 January 1980.
As it also happens, I am one of just a handful of people who had the honour to serve on the National Executive in both 1979 and 1980. Unfortunately, though, I was encouraged to put down my camera once I’d been co-opted onto the Committee in the summer of 1979, so I have been forced to trawl public domain archives for photographic evidence of that seminal change in aesthetics.
Of course, public domain sources are notoriously unreliable, whereas my memory is merely notorious.
Here are my “best efforts” to capture the look and spirit of the cusp of those decades.
The original Wikimedia Commons sources for these photos seem to think they are something else. In the interests of good manners and good practice, they are embedded below so other researchers might form their own opinion on these sources.
