Short Stuff: Leisure Suits

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Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer. On the eye-heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. We're converted 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 an icon of the 70s. I'm just going to come out and say it, face it. Yeah, I agree.

“And why do we feel the need to be so silly in short stuff?”

When did we give ourselves that permission from the get? Pretty much from the get go, yeah. All right, they have a different tone, which I enjoy. Well, yeah, I mean, you don't want just the same thing that's crazy.

Yeah, you never hear me going.

Me or maybe converted on a regular episode. Those are far too serious. First shirt, they're dead serious. Very dry. All right, it also gives us to 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.

The 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 got to wear suits sometimes too, but I don't want to be a stuffy. So I want something a little more chill. Yeah, and so like the guys in the 70s looked up from their lines of coke and said, hey, we want to be more chill 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 where the leisure suit was born. 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, little softer, and maybe the jacket and the pants didn't match, which was, you know, like a very casual look at the time.

Right, it was the original navy blazer with khakis. Yeah, probably. So yeah, that one's kind of like, all right, you can connect that, just in that it was like a less, like you said, stuffy suit. Yeah.

In connects it a little further starting in the 1920s, the roaring 20s, and the United States, there's something called a sack suit.

And if you go look for images of this, you're going to see basically every type of suit,

there is 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 to dance.

Yeah, agreed. It can get confusing when you're looking to stuff up. But the leisure suit is noted for polyester and polyester didn't come around until the 1940s in the UK, 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. Okay.

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Hey, this is Robert Lam, and this is Joe McCormick, and we're the hosts of the stuff to blow your mind to podcasts. This week on the show, it's Star Trek. So we're going to be talking about the board all week long,

“or are you ready to get some probes put in your flesh?”

That's right, tune in resistance is futile. We're going to talk science, the culture of the board, various interpretations, and we're going to talk about

Star Trek first contact on Weird House cinema on Friday.

Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. [Music] All right, this is what I don't quite understand. When the first sort of leisure suit as we know it came around in the 1970s,

it was manufactured by Lee Jeans as the LE-S-U-R-E suit. And is that where the name came from, like the leisure suit? I, my two senses, yes. Or were they playing on the fact that it was a leisure suit, and they were like Lee?

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

Okay, I found one ad that I think I found for the actual Lee sure suit. I saw that too. And yeah, it's everything you think. It's like a disco stew like a guy. Yes.

It was designed by a guy named Jerry Rosengarten, who was designing for Lee at the time.

“And I think I saw it debuted in 1970 on the Lee website,”

which is gold. It debuted in 1972. Okay. But regardless, when Lee 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 is made out of durable fabric for my little boy to wear it at Easter Mass.

Right. And that's pretty much what it was originally released for. It was like meant to be like less stuffy business a tire slash Easter a tire. Yeah.

And if you've never seen one, you know,

the pants in the jacket match. It was the 70s. So the pants were were flared. Maybe a bell bottom. Maybe just a nice flare.

The jacket looked sort of like what you might call a shacket these days. Like a shirt jacket. I've never heard that before. I never heard of a shacket. No.

I'd feel a little kneel because it's the closest. I mean, you've seen shackets. It's like a shirt jacket. No. I'll point one out next time we're hanging out.

Okay. Thank you. Or maybe I'll buy you one. Okay. So they have wide lapels. The leisure suit did.

Some of them did have a vest. Like if you think of the classic Trevoltas suit that we'll talk about at the end. That had a matching vest. And another kind of big.

Give away was they usually had contrasting stitching. So the stitching was a different color than the suit. Which is a look. It is definitely a look. A lot of people I don't want to say a lot.

Some people would actually just go buck wild. And where white patent leather shoes. Oh yeah. You can see there's plenty of pictures from the 1970s. People standing in front of their Malibu.

Probably wearing a leisure suit with like white patent leather shoes.

“And I think cousin Eddie wears patent leather shoes.”

White shoes with his leisure suit. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken. He's a great example. And then another great example is Oto from Beetlejuice.

When Beetlejuice pulls his smart suit off and all of a sudden he's wearing blue polyester and leisure suit with white patent leather shoes. People actually wore that shock. Yeah.

They wore that stuff.

It never became officeware.

I'm sure some people wore it to the office.

But it was kind of frowned upon. It was 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 it'll be comfortable. But it was like an it look for about 10 minutes. And then it became a bit of a joke. Yeah.

“I think it started to be forbidden that 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. Mandaleens.

Like it was not.

It was not an appropriate suit for the kind of place

the blues brothers showed up to get their maturity or in a player fire from. Boy nice reference. And you know before too long it's it's out of style. You know styles come and go.

But the leisure suit did not last long. That 80s power suit came in pretty quickly. And you know now it's just a little blip on the radar. A fashion history. Yeah.

It's a signifier. Right. So like disco stew is definitely going to be wearing a leisure suit or leisure suit. Larry.

Yes. He's going to be wearing a leisure suit too.

“But like you said I think the most iconic leisure suit”

of all time was Travoltaous from Sarah and your night fever. Yeah. 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 Cisco. The movie. Great great movie reviewer with his partner Roger Ebert. Own that suit.

He bought it in 1978 for a couple of grand. Which was a great deal because he sold it. It's 1999 in 1995 for a hundred and forty five thousand dollars. Yeah. Which is worth about three hundred today.

What an investment. Yeah. For real. Did you know that Gene Cisco's favorite movie is Sarah and Eric Feaver?

Oh yeah. We talked about it in that episode. I know. Many times since then I think. So it actually has gone down in Belle.

You I guess people are less attracted to kids today. Because the most recent time it was sold was at auction in 2023. And it had dipped down to 260 grand. Yeah. It's not bad for a white leisure suit.

Yeah. Not bad. And the good news is if you ever get invited to a 70s party or something.

A leisure suit is always a great way to go.

For a minute and women. I feel like the women had sort of the. The pants suit leisure suit version of this as well. Yeah. Like Kate Jackson and Charlie Zangels wore that kind of thing.

Okay. Jackson. I'll go down as a Jacqueline Smith fan. Oh. Sound like a real fan.

The set. Jacqueline Smith was Charlie Zangels. Yes. Why can't I keep that? They look alike.

Did they look at all alike? I mean they were both brinettes. The attractive brinettes. And the 70s. Sure.

There you go. So yes. I'm just a fight. That's right. I think sure stuff should be out.

Let's go.

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