From neon slogan T-shirts to hot pink eyeshadow, clubland fashion is shimmying off the dancefloor and on to the shop floor. The flourishing London club scene centred on nights such as Boombox in East London is the crucible for a crazy, dressed-up Eighties-meets-Nineties look hitting the mainstream with the impact of a thumping bassline.

You can try closing your eyes and hoping it will all go away and leave you and your Marni smocks in peace, but the trend has already reached tipping point. Or, as Steve Slocombe, founder of the club kids’ fashion bible, Super Super magazine, puts it: “The colour genie is out of the bottle.”

Outside Boombox at 11.30 on a Sunday night, the doorman is dressed like a cross between a chessboard and Darth Vader in drag. He is sporting a floor-length sci-fi coat in tiny squares of black and white plastic, and heavy eyeliner. Rewind almost 20 years to 1988, when Leigh Bowery, the cabaret artiste and regular on the underground club scene, performed in a similar checked coat, with the addition of some fake-eyeball-effect glasses.

The Boombox doorman’s coat was designed by Gareth Pugh, the acclaimed enfant horrible of British fashion, many of whose fetishistic designs are inspired by the eccentric costumes that Bowery would wear to the London clubs The Blitz and Taboo in the Eighties.

Images of Bowery in his surreal creations feature alongside footage of fashion shows by the cult Eighties label Bodymap in the exhibition The Secret Public: The Last Days of The British Underground 1978-1988 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, which invites parallels between the influence of nightlife on fashion then and now.

“I’m definitely inspired by the club scene,” says Henry Holland, a young British designer. “People are into dressing up again, as they were in the Eighties, but the look has evolved. They take ideas from that era and add on bits from other periods.”

In the early Eighties creatives, artists, designers and exhibitionists including Boy George and the dancer Michael Clark descended on The Blitz in bizarre outfits ranging from drag to nun costumes that gradually inspired much of the fashion of the time, as well as designers such as John Galliano and Kim Jones. Now, as well as stylists, artists and the kaleidoscopically attired club kids, an edgy crowd of designers including Christopher Kane, Gareth Pugh, Marios Schwab and Giles Deacon converge on Boombox and are developing a quirky style that is being picked up by major international brands and the high street. The big difference is that, unlike the early Eighties when trends stayed underground for much longer, in the MySpace era they move into the mainstream in a matter of months. Stefan Kalmar, a curator at the ICA, says: “The media culture sheds light on new scenes as soon as they appear.”

The escapist DIY aesthetic that characterised the Eighties underground scene explored at the ICA prevails at London clubs such as Antisocial and All You Can Eat, even though the clothes are not all Eighties-influenced. Popular items of clothing include orange wigs, ski goggles and jackets, loudly patterned tracksuits, gold or fluorescent leggings, Timmy Mallett specs with the glass missing, hi-top trainers, neon body paint and Adam Ant-style make-up. Yes, all at once. And yes, Timmy Mallett seems to be a style icon, along with Sue Pollard and Jimmy Savile.

Steve Slocombe says: “There are definite echoes of the Eighties club scene, but this is the supermarket of style: it’s the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties all in one outfit – sometimes even in one item.”

At a party hosted by Pop magazine at London Fashion Week, the photographer Oggy Jordan agreed that “there is a really strong identity to London club kids. The look is part new romantic, part punk, part goth, part nu-rave/electro and part hip-hop/ bling, which mixed together produces a unique look. It is centered around the Shoreditch scene (made up of fashion students and creatives) and the gay scene. The gay scene is a big part of it, and in London it is much more integrated than anywhere else in the world.”

The nu-rave element is one of the strongest influences and is sweeping into the mainstream. The teen television drama Skins featured a nu-rave scene with characters wearing neon hooded tops; and Topshop is stocking a “save the rave” slogan T-shirt and other rave items.

Slocombe says that this is the most interesting fashion movement for years, and is a reaction against depressing realities – as it was in the Eighties, he claims.

Mandi Lennard, a press officer who looks after Gareth Pugh and Henry Holland, adds: “Many people on this scene were brought up believing that the future would be bright and shiny and exciting. It’s the future now and it’s not really like that. They are reinventing it how they thought it would be.”

While Kalmar contends that the look lacks the political agenda of the Eighties underground, it is not without social significance. This could be the beginning of a new phase of antifashion – the goal being to liberate yourself from the bourgeois concept of “good taste”.

In a culture of increasing trophy consumerism, culminating in the WAGs and Louis Vuitton launching a £23,484 bag, the cheap individuality of what Super Super calls maxi-maximalism (ie, piling on everything at once) and sartorial Prozac brights makes a refreshing change: the elements may be retro but the mix feels new.

Christopher Kane and Karen Walker both used club-style neon in their current collections, and there is no doubt that major designers will be aware of fashions on the London club scene – after all, the Boombox clan hosted a party last Milan Fashion Week.

Balenciaga’s autumn/winter 2007 show featured loudly patterned jackets and Adam Ant-style make-up, and for this season Miuccia Prada has created bright neon handbags. While her autumn/winter 2007 collection isn’t exactly clubwear, its mismatched mix of lumpy fake-fur coats and plastic spangled skirts certainly shunned the tyranny of good taste. Last season she pronounced herself “bored of retro prettiness”, and this season “fed up of couture, fed up of volume, fed up of everything”.

Fashion-wise, where Miuccia Prada boldy goes, the rest of us usually follow. If she is ready to throw off the shackles of safe good taste, we should be braced for a brave new fashion world.

The Secret Public: The Last Days of The British Underground 1978-1988 is at the ICA until May 6

Club style then

Places: Billy’s; The Blitz; Taboo

People: Leigh Bowery; Steve Strange; Boy George; Adam Ant

Fashion: Bodymap catsuit; Adam Ant-style stripes of make-up

Music: Spandau Ballet; Visage

Club style now

Places: Chalk at The Scala; Boombox at The Hoxton Bar and Grill; All You Can Eat at Electrowerkz

People: Carrie Mundane, designer whose clothes interpret computer graphics; DJ Jodie Harsh; designer Henry Holland

Fashion: American Apparel gold lamé leggings; Barry M fluorescent nail varnish

Music: Crystal Castle’s remix of Atlantis to Interzone by the Klaxons; Electro booty; grime; baile (Brazilian) funk

Club fashion for squares

OK, so the Boombox scene is about dressing without rules, but ideology schmideology – you want to incorporate a few rave references, not resemble a raving idiot.

Ditch the “It” bag in favour of a computer-generated print shopper from Topshop. Or any cotton shopper. Also forget the Louis Vuitton leather laundrette bag: one drag queen at Boombox was spotted with a real laundrette bag.

Give yourself instant edge by swapping last year’s giant Jackie O shades for wacky sunglasses (and overcome your fear of the word wacky) – try Cutler and Gross’s pink neon shades or Ray-Ban Wayfarers with a white frame.

Avoid all-over neon. Instead try neon accessories such as asos.coms’s neon acrylic bangle, or kitsch plastic jewellery such as Tatty Devine’s record earrings.

You don’t have to draw a lightning stripe on your face to look, er, striking. Swap nude lipstick for hot coral or pink, and safe taupe eyeshadow for electric yellow or blue. Just don’t wear both at once.

Revel in not being a size zero – remember, Leigh Bowery was horizontally challenged. Club fashion is about celebrating diversity, not starving yourself.

Or . . . wear your whole wardrobe at once and shake your derriere like you just don’t care about looking good.

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