the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

Lesson #15
CULTURAL NORMS RESIST
RADICAL CHANGE
male fashion’s fabulous faux pas
The leisure suit is reviled as the ultimate icon of 1970sera
bad taste. But what was hyped as a harbinger of a
male fashion revolution actually turned out to be just
that, in a flammable double- knit way.
IT SPEAKS VOLUMES about the infamously kitschy reputation of
the leisure suit that today, the garment’s most prominent afi cionados are
Leisure Suit Larry, animated star of a series of tawdry computer games
about a “pathetic loser” trying to pick up women, and North Korean dictator
Kim Jong Il. In the case of the fictional Larry, his luminous pastel
wardrobe is intended to be ludicrous. Kim, on the other hand, gets away
with wearing leisure suits because the secretive “Dear Leader” seldom
ventures out of an isolated, totalitarian police state where nobody dares
smirk, for fear of ending up in a reeducation camp.
But let those of us in the free world not sneer too unreservedly. Put
aside for a moment the point that by any reasonably refi ned aesthetic,
leisure suits are, well, hideous. How else would one conceivably describe
an ensemble fashioned from stiff double-knit polyester, usually in a startlingly
bright hue or garish plaid, consisting of flared trousers and a
matching four or fi ve-button jacket with a winged collar in lieu of lapels?
Throw in optional epaulets and large, buttoned breast pockets, and the
result is a peculiar garment in which even the most debonair specimen of