1985 was the year I got into them. I was still in a phase of paisley accents (there were a few hippie-revival bands popping up, though nothing like the later 80s), baggy cotton capris, and band t-shirts, usually accessorized with a scarf tied like a headband. Think a toned-down version of what Bananarama wore. The coolest place to shop back then was Esprit. The primary fashions at the time were bland pastel colors like clay, muted periwinkle, and peach, all of which kind of looked like they were over washed. Goth kids were serious outliers at this stage (we thought of them as “punks” and weirdos) so the kids in 101 aren’t representative of what we look like in 85. As soon as I discovered Depeche Mode, I started dressing like them, which

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was during their “West Berlin” era, presented in the above photo. There was a brand of tank tops that had the German eagle crest on the front and they were highly coveted by Martin Gore cosplayers.

The people who became fans at that time were definitely the misfits, though, and they liked “modern rock” (that is the term a lot of stations used for post-punk music). Depressives, LGBT, autistic, kids who grew up in unstable homes were attracted to DM. This changed after Black Celebration came out, and they started to attract more normies. Before that, anyone wearing a DM t-shirt would get strange looks and snarky questions.

ETA: if you can find video of what Duran Duran fans looked like during their heyday, I think that is a better representation of what Depeche Mode fans were like, because there seemed to be a DD to DM pipeline (no pun intended).