Last week I found an old jacket in the back of my closet I hadn't worn in 20 years. On the hanger, at least, it seemed serviceable and nice-looking, except for one little detail: It had these big, honking shoulder pads that made me feel like an extra on "Dynasty."

I ripped them out and threw them away, and wouldn't you know it? The very next day I opened a copy of Time magazine and found an article declaring that shoulder pads were back.

Oh, wait. Not shoulder pads -- "strong shoulders," according to fashion blog Whowhatwear.com's trend report.

How could you, Jason Wu? Say it ain't so, Alexander Wang, Diane Von Furstenburg, Marc Jacobs.

Just when I was loving Michelle Obama's sweet little J.Crew cardigans, they pull me back in. Everywhere, it seems, there are rounded shoulders. Sharply squared shoulders. Linebacker shoulders. Jacobs, a gifted designer who nonetheless popularized the "grunge" look in 1992 (nobody's perfect), has been sending his models out onto the catwalk this year in big shoulders and big hair. Wonder how his fashion muse, Sofia Coppola -- she of the girlish little dresses, flat "mouse" slippers and understated fashion sense -- will buy into that?

Fashion writers are scrambling to explain. Time's Kate Betts says the new, sharply tailored jackets are about giving women confidence at a time of economic uncertainty. Oh, and giving women a reason to go shopping again.

"Now, admittedly, this shape is not new to fashion and has been prominent before (hello, 1980s power suit!), but the most current iteration of the trend conveys a much more sophisticated and dramatic effect," declare Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr, two former editors at Elle Magazine who founded WhoWhatWear.com, a Web site that interprets fashion trends.

They then go on to deconstruct the "two different types of the bold-shouldered look" -- the boxy, boyish cut at Marc Jacobs and Stella McCartney and "the sharper, more compact" shapes at Balmain, Balenciaga and Givenchy.

Response from posters, however, is mostly negative:

"Shoulder pads? Looks good on celebrities and models but not on normal people. Not again ..." wrote someone posting as Ave.

Locally, fashion-forward boutique owners say don't worry too much.

"Some women need a little bit of a lift, as long as it's not the great big Joan Collins look," says Linda Bucci, owner of a boutique by the same name in Shadyside, noting that the extreme padded shoulders on today's runways will be modified by the time they reach stores.

"They call them Judy Jetson suits, and they're all over the place for fall, but I don't have them in my store," she says, adding that a little padding -- within reason -- has its uses.

Still, she says, a little jersey dress by designer Marc Cain -- half black, half leopard, with three-quarter sleeves and no shoulder pads -- is more emblematic of where fashion is really going.

"Leopard is in, but we don't push it in your face."

For those who didn't live through the '80s, shoulder pads will nonetheless seem fresh, notes Vicki Pasula, owner of Victoria, a fashion boutique in O'Hara, who carries young designers such as Lida Baday, D Exterior, Twin Set and Judy Lee Cole.

"If you're a young woman in your 20s or 30s, it's a new look for you," she says, noting that recent runway collections will be more refined than anything Krystle Carrington ever wore. That's true whenever fashion revives an old look, she adds.

"It's always a little different. Just go into your closet and pull out that jacket and look at it. It's different from anything you'll see in a store today."

She's got that right. Even without the shoulder pads, the tailoring on the jacket I pulled out of my closet seemed so ... '80s, with its waspy nipped-in waist. So I tossed the whole thing.

Will I replace it with an updated "strong shoulders" look?

I don't know. We live in pretty tough economic times right now. When perusing my closet each morning for something to wear, why on Earth would I want to be reminded of the bad old days of the '80s -- when greed was good and women needed big, manly shoulder pads to feel "empowered" in the workplace?

Been there, done that.