Shoulder Pads

Unknown, ca. 1980

Cloth, thread, safety pins, cotton

Dimensions variable

Donated by Margaret Golding (my mother), 2020

Collection of Margaret Golding

The function of a shoulder pad is to show exaggerated strong squared shoulders on a person’s body, which was a desirable look in the 1980’s. Most shoulder pads were triangular in shape or semi-circular and were stuffed with wool, cotton or sawdust. These specific shoulder pads shown are semi-circular in shape and stuffed with cotton. They were created to be hidden. Alone, shoulder pads are only used for structural support to enhance the exaggerated physical shape and are sewn in garments to the inside lining. These shoulder pads were removed from an unknown article of clothing, most likely a women’s blouse or blazer.

I came into possession of these removed shoulder pads from rummaging through my mother’s closet on a rainy day. My mother couldn’t remember where she bought the shoulder pads from or the blouse/blazer they were attached to, but she did remember how she felt when she wore them. The time around which she wore these shoulder pads was during her teenage and university, or ‘reckless’ days as she calls them. Fashion is less about how you look in certain clothing items than how you feel in certain clothing items. Looks become secondary to emotion. Maybe the reason these shoulder pads have lasted in my mother’s closet more than decades is because of the feeling she got and still gets wearing them.

Shoulder pads were used as a method of conformity or camouflage for women in male dominated careers in the 1980’s, as they gave women a more masculine frame. When I wear shoulder pads today the feedback is quite the opposite, I stick out like a sore thumb and in some cases, I even turn heads. Society’s reaction to shoulder pads has changed entirely most likely because they are not a common fashion today and also because of the new character they were given in pop culture. Movies from the 80’s like Heathers and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as well as icons like Madonna and Grace Jones broadcasted the popularity of shoulder pads and associated them with strong female characters. Those associations with pop culture, more than anything, stand the test of time and will stand the test of time more than the object itself. Shoulder pads have been revived in today’s ‘vintage’ fashion but one day in the future they will no longer exist in any form other than memory, especially not physical. Like all of our memories, these can be both personal to an individual or broad, connecting a community or culture.

 Anna Golding