Short Stuff: Leisure Suits

You know the leisure suit, perhaps the tackiest suit to ever be invented. It was so huge in the 70s and spread as wide the lapels of the shirts worn with them. Then, as fast as they hit the scene they disappeared in shame. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:34Josh Clark?

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• 2:12Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave. So that automatically just converted this to a short stuff, whether you like it or not, sucker.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  Converted.

• 2:25Josh Clark?

  Very good. And we converted right back into the 70s accidentally, Chuck, because we're talking about leisure suits. And there's really no other decade that the leisure suit truly existed in. It's, it's an icon of the 70s. I'm just gonna come out and say it, face it.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree. And why do we feel the need to be so silly in short stuffs? When did we give ourselves that permission? From the get?

• 2:48Josh Clark?

  Pretty much from the get-go, yeah.

• 2:50Speaker 04

  All right, they have a different tone, which I enjoy.

• 2:53Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, I mean, you don't want just the same thing. That's crazy.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, you never hear me going, "converted" on a regular episode. Those are far too serious.

• 3:03Josh Clark?

  For sure, they're dead serious, very dry.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  All right, it also gives us a chance to cover things like leisure suits, which, you know, we'll talk about sort of the precursors that weren't really leisure suits, but may have led to them. But the leisure suit that we're really talking about, obviously, is the one from the mid 70s, which was, you know, the jacket and pants thing with the wide lapels. And apparently, they came about really in the 70s, but had a lot of precursors, including the 1960s, when hippies were like, "Yeah, I gotta wear a suit sometimes too, but I don't want to be a stuffy, so I want something a little more chill."

• 3:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so like the guys in the 70s looked up from their lines of coke and said, "Hey, we want to be more chilled too, but we still have jobs, unlike those dirty hippies, so we need to have something to wear to the office, but also chill." So weirdly, a leisure suit is, or it came out of the concept of hippies wearing suits at the office. That was the, that was where the leisure suit was born.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, some early maybe inspirations, maybe some of these are reaches, but there had been in fashion history, some other kind of a little more relaxed suits, including in 1800s Britain, there was something called a lounge suit. That was, you know, that was a very stuffy time when everything matched and everything was, maybe they even had like coat tails and things. And this was just a little less structured, a little softer, and maybe the jacket and the pants didn't match, which was, you know, like a very casual look at the time.

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  Right, it was the original navy blazer with khakis.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, probably.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  Pleated khakis.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:48Josh Clark?

  So yeah, that one's kind of like, all right, you can connect that, just in, in that it was like a less, like you said, stuffy suit.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:57Josh Clark?

  And connect it a little further, starting in the 1920s, the roaring 20s in the United States, there's something called a sack suit. And if you go look for images of this, you're gonna see basically every type of suit there is.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:08Josh Clark?

  All called sack suits. So I'm still not entirely certain what a sack suit looks like, but it's a tailored, relaxed type of suit, as opposed to say something in like flannel with like sharp lines and stuff like that. That's the best I can explain it as.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, agreed. It can get confusing when you're looking this stuff up.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  But the leisure suit is noted for polyester, and polyester didn't come around until the 1940s in the UK.

• 5:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  And didn't really like get big until the 1970s in the United States. When the leisure suit came around, and maybe we should take an early break, because we have a little bit of a teaser on why, well, I don't know if it was named this for this reason or not, but we'll settle it after this.

• 5:56Josh Clark?

  Okay.

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• 7:20Josh Clark?

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• 8:28Speaker 04

  All right, this is what I don't quite understand. When this, when the first sort of leisure suit as we know it came around in the 1970s?

• 8:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  It was manufactured by Lee Jeans as the L-E-E-dash-S-U-R-E suit. And is that where the name came from, like the leisure suit?

• 8:48Josh Clark?

  My two cents is yes.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Or were they playing on the fact that it was a leisure suit and they were like, Lee, sure?

• 8:55Josh Clark?

  No, I think that they were, they were playing, it was a play on leisure, obviously, but I think they were the ones who introduced the, the word leisure to the concept of a relaxed suit. That's my take.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Okay. I found one ad that I think I found for the actual Lee sure suit.

• 9:13Josh Clark?

  I saw that too.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  And, uh, yeah, it's everything you think. It's, it's like a disco stew like guy.

• 9:19Josh Clark?

  Yes. Um, it was designed by a guy named Jerry Rosengarten, who was designing for Lee at the time. And I think, uh, I saw it debuted in 1970 on the Lee website, which is, um, gold. It debuted in 1972.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  But regardless, when Lee, um, debuted it, remember this is something that guys were like, we want something relaxed, but that we can wear for the office. And moms were like, we want something relaxed that, uh, is made out of durable fabric for my little boy to wear to Easter mass.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:51Josh Clark?

  And that's, that's pretty much what it was originally released for. It was like meant to be like less stuffy business attire slash Easter attire.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. And if you've never seen one, you know, the pants and the jacket match. Uh, it was the seventies. So the pants were, were flared, maybe, maybe a bell bottom, maybe just a nice flare. Uh, the jacket looked sort of like what you might call a shacket these days, like a shirt jacket.

• 10:18Josh Clark?

  I've never heard that before.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Oh, you never heard of a shacket?

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  No, I've heard of Shaquille O'Neal, but that's the closest.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  I mean, you've seen shackets. It's like a, yeah, like a shirt jacket.

• 10:28Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  I'll point one out next time we're hanging out.

• 10:30Josh Clark?

  Okay. Thank you.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  Or maybe I'll buy you one.

• 10:32Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  So they have wide lapels, the leisure suit did. Uh, some of them did have a vest. Like if you think of the classic Travolta suit that we'll talk about at the end, that, that had a matching vest.

• 10:44Josh Clark?

  Sharp.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  And another kind of big, uh, giveaway was, uh, they usually had contrasting stitching. So the stitching was a different color than the suit, which is a look.

• 10:57Josh Clark?

  It is definitely a look. Um, a lot of people, I don't want to say a lot. Some people would actually just go buck wild and wear white patent leather shoes with them. You can see there's plenty of pictures from the 1970s, people standing in front of their Malibu proudly, wearing a leisure suit with like white patent leather shoes. And, um, I think cousin Eddie wears patent leather shoes, white shoes with his leisure suit, if I'm not mistaken.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  He's a great example.

• 11:26Josh Clark?

  And then another great example is Otho from Beetlejuice. When Beetlejuice pulls his, um, smart suit off and all of a sudden he's wearing blue polyester leisure suit with white patent leather shoes. People actually wore that, Chuck.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, they wore that stuff. Uh, it never became office wear like they were hoping it would, I think. I'm sure some people wore it to the office, but it was kind of frowned upon. It was, uh, for like a more formal thing like that. And it was definitely more for like hitting the disco or going out or getting together with neighbors and that kind of thing. When you wanted to look dressy, but I guess still be comfortable. Uh, but it was like an it look for about 10 minutes and then it became a bit of a joke.

• 12:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I think it started to be forbidden at like nicer restaurants. You couldn't wear it. And I'm guessing the reason why is because most people paired it with a shirt that was well open at the collar, lots of chest hair flowing out, medallions. Like it was not, it was not an, um, it's not an appropriate suit for the kind of place the Blues Brothers showed up to get their matrony horn player fired from.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  Boy, nice reference. Uh, and you know, before too long, it's, it's out of style. Uh, you know, styles come and go, but the leisure suit did not last long. That eighties power suit came in pretty quickly. And, uh, you know, now it's just a little blip on the radar of fashion history.

• 12:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's a signifier, right? So like disco stew is definitely going to be wearing a leisure suit or leisure suit. Larry, obviously is going to be wearing a leisure suit too.

• 13:03Josh Clark?

  But like you said, I think the most iconic leisure suit of all time was Travolta's from Saturday Night Fever.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Uh, that's had an interesting history over the years. It was purchased for the film from a store in New Jersey, not surprisingly, for about a hundred bucks. And very famously, and we've talked about this before, Gene Siskel, the, uh, the movie, great, great movie reviewer with his partner, Roger Ebert owned that suit. He bought it in 1978 for a couple of grand, which was a great deal because he sold it, uh, 1990, in 1995 for a hundred and $45,000.

• 13:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Which is worth about 300 today.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  What an investment.

• 13:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for real. Did you know that Gene Siskel's favorite movie is Saturday Night Fever?

• 13:47Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. We talked about it in that episode.

• 13:49Josh Clark?

  I know. Um, many times since then, I think. Uh, so it actually has gone down in value. I guess people, um, are less attracted to kitsch today because the most recent, uh, time it was sold was at auction in 2023 and it had dipped down to 260 grand.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:08Josh Clark?

  It's not bad for a white leisure suit.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, not bad. And the good news is, uh, if you ever get invited to a, a seventies party or something, a leisure suit is always a great way to go, uh, for men and women. I feel like the women had sort of the, the pantsuit leisure suit version of this as well.

• 14:27Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Like Kate Jackson and, uh, Charlie's Angels wore that kind of thing.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  Kate Jackson.

• 14:34Josh Clark?

  I'll go down as a Jaclyn Smith fan.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Oh, sound like a real fan.

• 14:40Josh Clark?

  Bessette?

• 14:42Speaker 04

  Jaclyn Smith was Charlie's Angels. Yes.

• 14:44Josh Clark?

  Why can't I keep that? They look alike. Do they look at all alike?

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Uh, I mean, they were both brunettes, the attractive brunettes in the seventies. Sure.

• 14:53Josh Clark?

  There you go. So yes, I'm justified.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 14:57Josh Clark?

  I think short stuff should be out, Chuck.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  Let's go.

• 15:03Speaker 06

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