It’s been fun to watch our thirty-something friends squirm as all the awful ’80s trends come back to haunt them, hasn’t it? It started with leggings, tights and miniskirts, then leg warmers and off-the-shoulder tops. But now designers are dipping into dangerous waters: the power shoulder. This style, which uses padding to create an exaggerated and wide upper body silhouette, has turned up on several occasions in the past few seasons.

For fall 2007, Gucci designer Frieda Giannini showed a sharply tailored jacket that featured leather cups on the shoulders. The effect was a boxy silhouette that accentuated the high, belted waist.

This Fall 2007 Fashion Week model sports shoulder-accentuating cups. Photo by Peter Duhon on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

At Yves Saint Laurent, the spring 2008 show opened with a belted, sleeveless jacket whose shoulders extended far past the model’s frame.

The power deal was sealed at the spring 2008 Balenciaga show, where most silhouettes featured a sculptural, bulbous shoulder and wide, exaggerated hips.

What’s new, though, is the way designers are using these shapes to give a more feminine feel to fashion. By broadening the shoulders or hips, the high waist looks tiny in comparison—not exactly the strong, masculine interpretation of these shapes that was common in the early ’90s.

While the power shoulder may be showing signs of a second-coming, fashion experts aren’t touting it as the next major trend. “They change the shape of the shoulder every season,” said Geoffrey Henderson, a personal shopper at Chicago’s Neiman Marcus on Michigan Avenue. For spring, the more important trend was color, he said.

But Cueatrice Scott, a womenswear sales associate at Chicago’s Barneys New York, didn’t totally dismiss the trend. “Definitely it’s important for spring because a strong shoulder balances out a lot of the volume you have in the dresses,” he said. Scott doesn’t see the trend trickling down into more accessible designer’s lines any time soon, however. “In terms of more mainstream designers, like Diane von Furstenberg, it’s not going to be very prevalent,” he said.

The trend is not slowing down yet, though. Recent shows in New York, including Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein, contained broad-shouldered garments that, this time, skipped the slim waist, heading straight for a menswear feel. If we’ve learned anything from the resurface of the ever-bemoaned spandexed, no-pants trend, we’ll keep our minds open.