This 1987 Fashion Show Proves Miss Universe Has Always Been Batshit

If you just couldn’t get enough of the styles featured in that 1981 Sears catalog (on glorious LaserDisc!), you’re gonna love this—a fashion show from the 1987 Miss Universe telecast. Yes, that is a very orange Bob Barker hosting. It looks like all these women were styled by me, at nine, playing with my Barbies.

Oh, and that staging. There are gongs and fans and other cringe-inducing nods to the venue in Singapore, but there are also a lot of weird futuristic touches, like neon lights going every which way. I guess batshittery is not a new addition to the Miss Universe competition.

Elsewhere in the glorious trash culture archive that is YouTube, you can find the opening of the broadcast, which is quite simply an orgy of tropes about the “exotic Orient.” It features the reigning Miss Universe taking a sensual bath while a Siamese cat looks on. HINT HINT:

I mean:

And of course somebody has uploaded the crowning. There’s enough hairspray to kill, even from thirty years away. Miss Universe, ladies and gentlemen!