Short Stuff: Leisure Suits

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1:01Forhers.com slash S.Y.S.K. Weight loss by hers is not available in all 50 states. Wagovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit forhers.com. Stuckishinoe is brought to you by Granger, and if you're responsible for keeping inventory stocked in a warehouse, you already know having critical parts on hand is key. But did you also know Granger offers a vast selection of professional grade products, including barcode scanners, V-belts and safety gear? Plus, Granger can help you get the products you need the same or next day, so you stay stocked and ready for whatever your operation demands. Call 1-800-GRanger, click Granger.com or stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. 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

2:02just converted this to a short stuff, whether you like it or not, sucker. We're converted. 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. Why do we feel the need to be so silly and 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, converted on a regular episode. Those are far too serious. For sure. They're dead serious. Very dry. All right. It also gives us a chance to cover things like leisure suits, which 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,

3:04which was the jacket and pants thing with the wide lapels. 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 suit 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 on like those dirty hippies. So, we need to have something to wear to the office, but also chill. So, weirdly, a leisure suit 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.

4:07There was something called a lounge suit that was, you know, that was a very stuffy time when everything matched and everything was maybe even had like, coattails 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. Right. It was the original Navy Blazer with khakis. Yeah, probably. Pleated khakis. Yeah. 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. And connects 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 going to see basically every type of suit there is. Yeah. 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.

5:07Like that. That's the best I can explain it as. 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. Cleaning starts with one small task and suddenly it's the whole house. Luckily, there's air tasker. Post your task, set your budget, and choose a tasker to help from carpet cleaning to finally tackling the junk door. Go to airtasker.com or download the app.

6:09Airtasker. Get anything done. Did you know that Apple has a new tool for helping businesses like yours grow? It's called Apple Business and it's free to get started today. Just claim your location and control how your business shows up across Apple apps, including maps, Siri, and more. And now you have a new way to show up to an even wider audience of potential customers with ads on Apple Maps, available in the US and Canada. Sign up for Apple Business today. 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-SUR-E suit. And is that where the name came from, like the leisure suit?

7:10I'm 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 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. They debuted in 1972. Okay. But regardless when Lee debuted, 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

8:11boy to wear to Easter masks. And that's pretty much what it was originally released for. It was meant to be less stuffy business attire slash Easter attire. Yeah. And if you've never seen one, you know, the pants and the jacket match, it was the 70s. So the pants 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. You never heard of a shacket? No. I've heard it's a kilo neal, but that's the closest. I mean, you've seen shackets. It's like a shirt jacket. 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 Travolta suit that we'll talk about at the end, that had a matching vest. Sure. And another kind of big give away was they usually had contrasting stitching.

9:15So 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 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 I think cousin Eddie wears patent leather shoes white shoes with his leisure suit. Yeah. He's a great example. And then another great example is Otho from Beetlejuice. When Beetlejuice pulls his smart suit off and all of sudden he's wearing blue polyester leisure suit with white patent leather shoes, people actually wore that chalk. Yeah. They wore that stuff. 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 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

10:19neighbors and that kind of thing when you wanted to look dressy. But I guess they'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 at like nicer restaurants. You couldn't wear it. 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. Mandalions. It was not an appropriate suit for the kind of place the Blue's Brothers showed up to get their maturity foreign player fired from. Boy nice reference. And before too long it's out of style. Styles come and go, but the leisure suit did not last long. That 80s power suit came in pretty quickly. And now it's just a little blip on the radar of fashion history. Yeah, it's a signifier. So like disco stew is definitely going to be wearing a leisure suit or leisure suit layering. Obviously it's going to be wearing a leisure suit too.

11:25But like you said, I think the most iconic leisure suit of all time was Travolta's from Serenade 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 Siskel, 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 in 1995 for $145,000. Yeah, which was worth about 300 today. What an investment. Yeah, for real. Did you know that Gene Siskel's favorite movie is Serenade Fever? Oh yeah, we talked about it in that episode. I know. In many times since then I think. So it actually has gone down in value. I guess people are less attracted to kitsch today because the most recent time it was sold was at auction in 2023

12:26and 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 men and women. I feel like the women had sort of the the pant suit leisure suit version of this as well. Yeah, like Kate Jackson and Charlie's Angels wore that kind of thing. Kate Jackson. I'll go down as a Jacqueline Smith fan. Oh, sound like a real fan. Becet? Jacqueline Smith was Charlie's Angels, yes. Why can't I keep that? They look alike. Do they look at all alike? I mean, they were both prunettes, attracted by nets in the 70s. Sure. Thank you. So yes, I'm just a fighter. That's right. I think sure stuff should be out, Chuck. Let's go. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart radio,

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