The 80s – Breakdance, E.T. and Fitness Trends

If one considers the zeitgeist of the golden post-war years and the exuberant 1970s, the 1980s appear much more matter-of-fact and above all more modern. Many of the developments of this decade still seem to be very topical today.

After the first commercial rap song "Rapper's Delight" was released by the Sugarhill Gang in November 1979, the spread of hip-hop was unstoppable. Today, more than 40 years later, hip-hop is present in the charts worldwide. In addition to hip hop, the 80s also stand for increasingly electric sounds. Especially in New Wave and the pop music of the 80s, the artificial sounds were now omnipresent. Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Alphaville or Modern Talking would not have been able to produce the same music without synthesizers.

Like every decade, the 80s also had an important influence on clothing: jogging suits and perms were now popular; carrot pants and shoulder pads were found on every corner. Sneakers also came to the fore for the first time - not least driven by the increasingly popular hip-hop culture.

The cinemas showed popular classics like E.T., Dirty Dancing and the first Indiana Jones part, which are still well known today. Films like Back to the Future with the legendary DeLorean DMC-12, Scarface and Rambo also made their debut.

The 1980s are also considered the decade in which the transition from the industrial age to the information age took place. Microsoft and Apple, founded in 1975 and 1976, had a corresponding share in this. The ICB personal computer and the Commodore 64 appeared in 1981 and 1982, and the first Mac came on the market in 1984.

In 1986, one of the greatest misfortunes in world history occurred when the fourth reactor block exploded as a result of a simulation of a complete power failure, causing a catastrophic accident of the highest category. To this day, the entire area around the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, which is four kilometres from the former nuclear power plant, remains a restricted military area.

The fitness trend that emerged in the 1980s still shapes current events today. While the 1980s are mainly associated with aerobics classes and neon-coloured jogging suits (the headband was of course a must!), today it is hard to imagine life without the Apple Watch as a fitness tracker and healthy eating as symbols of healthy living.

At the end of the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry faced a threat to its existence due to the boom in quartz: Two-thirds of the 90,000 jobs in Switzerland were lost, and numerous manufacturers had to cease operations. The new quartz watches from Japan were cheaper, more robust and above all more precise than the mechanical primeval stones from Switzerland.

But the dawn of the new decade gave cause for cautious optimism: with the founding of the Swiss brand Swatch in 1983, the Swiss watch industry embarked on a completely new path. Instead of traditional watchmaking, Swatch focused on simple and above all inexpensive plastic watches, whose self-image resembled that of fashion accessories. The price of a Swatch watch was 65.00 DM (33.24 euros). The new strategy was extremely successful: only two years later - in 1985 - the 10,000,000th Swatch watch was produced. This enormous success gave a new boost to the image of Swiss watches, but above all it provided new liquidity, which was urgently needed.

It would be many years before the Swiss watch industry would recover from the quartz crisis. This would probably never have been possible without the launch of the Swatch watch. Today, Swatch father Nicolas G. Hayek and Swatch AG are among the saviors of the Swiss watch industry.

In the 80s, the bi-color hype appeared for the first time. While wristwatches have always been primarily made of precious metals and, as a result of the quartz crisis and the emergence of sports watches in the 1970s, stainless steel became the focus of watch wearers, the characteristic material mix has been fully in vogue since the beginning of the 1980s. The reason is quite simple: while non-conformist, consumer-critical voices were first heard in the late 1960s and 1970s, a counter-movement now established itself, including poppers and yuppies. Demonstrative materialism and the conscious display of consumer goods became an attitude to life - just think of Miami Vice - and this attitude to life was expressed, among other things, with eye-catching bicolor watches.

The greatest bicolor classics of this time are above all the Rolex Datejust as well as Submariner (Ref. 16803) and the Breitling Chronomat. Since the end of the 2010s, Bicolor has been back in vogue: not only combinations of gold and stainless steel are increasingly in demand and produced again, but more exotic material mixes such as stainless steel and bronze are also being offered, for example the Oris Divers Sixty-Five "Bico".

The 80s also had a lot to offer in terms of watch models. A classic that is sought after today is the Rolex GMT-Master II with reference 16760 (nicknamed "fat lady"), which was produced between 1983 and 1988 and sold exclusively with a black and red bezel. The nickname "fat lady" is explained by the fact that the Ref. 16760 had a thicker case and wider crown protection.

Omega launched a watch in the typical 80s style with the 1982 relaunch of the Constellation Manhattan. The characteristic integral design with the eccentric case handles at three and nine o'clock and the Roman numerals is one of the great design classics. The first versions of the Omega Constellation Manhattan were delivered with the ultra-slim ETA Calibre 1422; from 1984 onwards, a self-winding version was available (Calibre 1111 based on ETA 2892-2). In 1995, the case handles were "defused" a little bit.

The Omega Constellation Manhattan is still in production today. Since 2015, the watches are available with the mechanical Omega Master Chronometer.