The Bee Gees embodied the decade of hardcore glamour for men

This is most peculiar. I seem to have reached a point where half my life is slipping into history. My nostalgia circuitry is all a-quiver and odd bits of memory are drifting in through the ether in snatches. Hearing about the death of Robin Gibb stirred up whole flocks of forgotten memories: the feel of white silk satin, the scent of YSL Rive Gauche, Biba and black velvet, candy-striped lurex, glitter, cape-sleeved floaty disco frocks, and in the background the Bee Gees are singing More than a Woman. I can't find More than a Woman on YouTube with original Bee Gees footage, perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place. I did find the opening credits to Saturday Night Fever though and identified one of those rare moments when fashion, music and culture come together in one place to create a style with gravitational pull so strong it sucked in almost every one of us. John Travolta's hip-swinging, finger-snapping syncopated strut to Barry, Robin and Maurice singing Staying Alive caught the moment and bottled it forever.

I don't think I was ever 'in love' with the Bee Gees in the way that I was with Marc Bolan but I was kind of fascinated by the snake-hipped, ultra-tight thing they had going on. And the lyrics… "Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time to talk…" Um, no, not really - not when you're a warbling falsetto and wearing more hairspray and fake tan than I am. The Bee Gees took glam rock's feminised masculinity one step beyond, gave it a disco spin and became synonymous with glitter balls, illuminated dance floors and enough man-made fibre to light up Manhattan with the static discharge.

The late 70s were when clothes melted if they got near a naked flame... the era of tricel, rayon, lycra and polyester. A time of shirts unbuttoned to the navel, medallions, chest hair and trousers so tight they entirely and obviously removed any doubt about which side a gentleman 'dressed' and yet it was somehow non-threatening, I think because the predominant palette was white, pastel or a soft metallic. You always knew what you were going to get when the Bee Gees were on Top of the Pops - a soft-focus film of elaborately coiffed men standing sideways to the camera, singing close three-part harmony into a wind machine, impressive dentistry the same blinding white as the clothes they were wearing. And possibly gold satin bomber jackets: hardcore glamour for men. An impossible romantic ideal, drenched in Aramis aftershave.

I still have some things that have travelled through the last 30-odd years with me: a dove-grey crepe dress which I still wear; a white overlaid mesh frock which I don't; a heavy Bulatti crystal cuff and a black silk tulip-skirted cocktail gown. All lovingly preserved in tissue, each fold and tuck redolent with memory. The Bee Gees sat squarely at the cusp of a decade when "Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci" [Sister Sledge] ruled the Studio 54 dance floor - right before we tipped over into the hedonism and New Romanticism of the 80s - but somehow the New Romantics don't push the nostalgia buttons in quite the same way the glorious Gibb brothers do.

The Invisible Woman writes a weekly column about fashion from an older woman's perspective. Follow her on on Twitter @TheVintageYear

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