the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

CULTURAL NORMS RESIST RADICAL CHANGE 163
a client? Can a white-collar worker work with his collar open? Yes, thanks
to the leisure suit revolution!”
Moreover, because of the limitations of the then-crude synthetic
fabrics from which they were made—an expensive version didn’t look
that much different from a cheap one—leisure suits’ popularity had the
subtle effect of blurring the rank and class distinctions usually signifi ed by
one’s tailoring. Some even saw them as evidence of an evolutionary change
in corporate culture, away from rigid conformity and toward a more relaxed,
convivial atmosphere. New York Times fashion critic Philip H.
Dougherty boldly proclaimed in 1975 that the leisure suit and its variations
were “symbols of a new lifestyle and are with us for good, as far as
some experts are concerned.” In 1976, Chip Tolbert, an official of the
Men’s Fashion Association of America, a clothing industry group, went so
far as to refer to the leisure suit itself as “a way of life.” The leisure suit was
so ubiquitous that toy maker Mattel updated Barbie’s companion Ken by
dressing him in a rakish white version. As fashion historian Valerie Steele
has noted, leisure suits became “a middle-class spin-off of hippie clothing,
part of the experimentation with men’s wear and the breakdown of
formality.”
Conversely, to traditionalists of that era, the leisure suit was not so
much laughable as a potentially cataclysmic threat to the status quo of
men’s fashion. Brooks Brothers president Frank Reilly told the Washington
Post in 1977 that he found the 1970s leisure suit far more disturbing
than the unkempt, denim-clad sixties counterculture’s rejection of traditional
fashion. “Everybody was going to buy one,” he reflects with distaste,
“because they were cheap. That was much scarier to me.”
And of course, it didn’t happen. After several years of astounding
popularity, the leisure suit abruptly went from sartorial sensation to object
of ridicule—an extraordinarily rare event in the normally glacially slow
evolution of men’s attire. But even though the leisure suit flopped, the notion
behind it—that men felt constrained and uncomfortable in traditional