80s Leg Warmers

8os Leg Warmers

8o's Leg Warmers

Leg warmers are a type of garment for the lower legs, similar to the basic sock but only much thicker and generally footless. Leg warmers were historically dancewear worn by ballet and other classically trained dancers. It is a belief; by many dancers, leg warmers help warm the lower calf before practice and or performing.

Worn during the first parts of class or practice, leg warmers help the muscles and tendons in the calf and ankle warm up until they are sufficiently loosened from stretching, particularly in frigid environments. Using leg warmers is thought to avert muscle and ligament strains, due to over-exercising cold legs. They are also used to keep dancer’s leg muscles warm, between periods of activity.

However, in the 80’s legwarmers meant a completely different meaning to a whole generation of people. Leg warmers had always been a staple in a dancer’s wardrobe, but it was not until the early eighties that leg warmers gained great popularity; leg warmers suddenly were not just for dancers anymore! Leg warmers were one of the hottest fashion items back then; they were flying off the shelves and were all the rage back then.

Leg warmers were worn with other dancer-inspired apparel or clothes that made people look like they’d just finished a workout. They were not the plain and basic-colored dancer’s clothing anymore. Leg warmers were no longer just black or some other plain dull color, suddenly Leg warmers were being made to be worn in funky fashions and colors. Leg warmers could be seen in movies, gyms, videos and in the streets, as an 80’s fad, it seemed leg warmers were everywhere in the eighties.

The leg warmers movement in the eighties did not endure very long and was practically all gone from the shops by the latter part of the decade.  For some time after that, leg warmers were regarded as just one of those half-baked fashions of the eighties.  Leg warmers nowadays are not as flashy and as crazy as they were in the 80s thankfully, but you are still able to still browse from an assortment of styles and designs.

• One quick note, since the release of Flashdance they achieved such tremendous fad status, legwarmers are often seen as the single piece of clothing most demonstrative of 80s fashion disasters.