When did the leisure suit come into being? If you said the 1970s when disco both ruled and sucked (depending on whether you did not or did have taste in music), you are wrong, camel-breath. The precursor of the notoriously unattractive 1970s leisure suit actually dates all the way back to the England of the 1700s. Looking something like a leisure suit was the clothing that gentlemen wore in the England of this period for horseback riding and leisurely walks. The fit was loose, the cut was baggy, and the attire was technically known as a lounge suit.
The leisure suit as we know and mock it today was the supreme desire of a certain kind of 1970s animal known as the lounge lizard, not coincidentally. While everyone from Bob Newhart to John Travolta was wearing leisure suits in the 1970s, the place where you could almost suffocate from the noxious fumes being exhausted by the leisure suits were in the “2001” discos that dotted the country in the mid-to-late 1970s. As such execrable so-called songs as “I Love the Night” and anything by the Bee-Gees pounded their dreadfully monotonous rhythm, and dance floors lighted up beneath the stomping of short men looking for height in platform heels, a quick glance would reveal an enormous number of those men attired in the pastel colors of leisure suits.
While those lounge suits worn by British gents of the 18th century were made of wood and tweed, the leisure suit was constructed of polyester; the fabric that could not be destroyed in a five alarm fire. The lounge suit of those English rakes was designed to be worn in casual opposition to the more constricting daily wear associated with the dandyish fashionistas of the 1700s and, likewise, the leisure suit was intended to be an alternative to the button-down construction of the three piece suit worn at work. Work was the place for discomfort; the disco was the site at which a man could relax and groove to the pounding bass drum beat while dreaming of finding Jackie O at Studio 54. Unlike with almost all other fashion movements in which there is first a cultish adoption of a fashion sense on the street that is co-opted by the Pink Mafia in the fashion industry, the leisure suit went from the top down. It was celebrities who truly first began making the leisure suit popular. There is, perhaps, a fascinating and almost ironic reason behind it.
The entertainment industry is, as is well know, a predominantly Jewish milieu. So is South Florida and the retirement communities of the Southwest. Back before the leisure suit was a relatively inexpensive alternative to the suit and tie, retirees who were certainly not all Jewish though quite a bit were had been given to wearing a more expensive variety of the leisure suit. Very few changes were made as far as tailoring of the leisure suit from the golf course to the disco; the primary change was in price. Surprisingly, the leisure suit that began popping up at Studio 54 and 2001 nightclubs across America was priced to move at a much lesser price.
The heyday of the leisure suit was shockingly short. Before the 70s had even ended signs were beginning to pop up at highbrow restaurants and clubs warning that leisure suits were not acceptable attire for entry. Almost as soon as every celebrity in town had put them, comedians were making such fun of the new disco styling that they had to be taken off and stuffed into the back of the closet. The mere idea that anyone who lived through the 1970s had once owned a leisure suit is enough for that person to become the butt of more jokes than Totie Fields.
Sources:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Suit-(clothing)
