Short Stuff: Leisure Suits

Stuff You Should Know

This episode of 'Stuff You Should Know' explores the cultural phenomenon of the leisure suit, tracing its origins in the 1970s as a relaxed alternative to formal

Key takeaways

The leisure suit emerged from a blend of hippie-inspired casual wear and professional needs in the 1970s.

Main topics

Origins of the leisure suit
Fashion evolution from 1800s to 1970s

Notable quotes

"It was purchased for the film from a store in New Jersey, not surprisingly, for about $100."

Conclusion

Though the leisure suit faded quickly from mainstream fashion, it rema

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. I Speaker 5 (0:04) have 32 new photos of 9-11 from a camera found in the Rubble of the World Trade Center, never published until today. My name is John Walczak, and my new film, 32 Frames, A 9-11 Mystery, is now available to stream. For more information, go to 32frames.com. And if you haven't listened to my podcast, Missing on 9-11, hey, that's where this all started. Listen to Missing on 9-11 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite Speaker 6 (0:32) shows. Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, Here's the Thing, I talk to actor Stephen Root. Speaker 1 (0:40) I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the drain, go, yeah, I can use that. And Speaker 6 (0:45) Open Igloo co-founder Alia Mohammed. Speaker 4 (0:47) I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. Speaker 6 (0:59) Listen to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (1:10) 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. 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. Speaker 2 (1:38) Yeah, I agree. And why do we feel the need to be so silly in short stuff? So 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, Speaker 3 (1:51) yeah. I mean, you don't want just the same thing. That's crazy. Speaker 2 (1:54) Yeah, you never hear me going, meep, meep, Speaker 3 (1:57) meep, meep, Speaker 2 (1:57) converted on a regular episode. Those are far too serious. Speaker 3 (2:01) For sure. They're dead serious. Very dry. All Speaker 2 (2:04) right. It also gives us the 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 got to wear a suit sometimes too, but I don't want to be a... stuffy. So I want something a little more chill. Speaker 3 (2:40) 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. Speaker 2 (3:09) 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