I remember the kind of dresses you describe here, from the earliest 80s especially. They looked kind of like oversized sweatshirts. I was hoping this would be about the 70s dresses called skimps (unlikely, I know, since this is the 80s section). In most of the 70s, and definitely in the middle of that decade, lengths were at least just-below-the-knee; the miniskirts of the 60s seemed out of style and laughable, even to young women. But when designer Stephen Sprouse was working for Halston in the mid-70s, he already missed the short hems of the 60s and wanted to reintroduce them. Halston let him and he introduced a mid-thigh-length slipdress and a tunic-dress of a similar length; he referred to these as "skimps." They didn't catch on but you can see them in fashion magazines of the time. And of course, in the 80s Sprouse gave his 60s obsession free reign and became famous in his right for 60s-looking clothes, first as designer for Debbie Harry of Blondie.