Reference: “1970s The Me Decade”, Gale University publication.

Fashion Despite the bell-bottom and platform-shoe revival of the early 2000s, it is unlikely that anyone will remember the 1970s for the quality of its innovations in fashion. In fact, many of the favorite fashions of the 1970s are now remembered with humor. Hot pants, polyester leisure suits, and mood rings—what were they thinking? The fashion excesses of the 1970s can be partially blamed on the widespread use of polyester. Clothing designers latched onto this fabric and offered Americans brightly colored knit shirts with a silky sheen, “wild” hot pants and miniskirts in an array of chemically enhanced colors, and comfortable leisure suits for wearing to the disco. The sheer novelty of the styles and colors drew people to the clothes, but it was not until the late 1970s that many realized just how ugly those clothes had become. Novelty also explained the popularity of the mood ring. This ring, which registered the wearer’s emotional state in the changing colors of the stone, became a jewelry fad in the 1970s. The 1970s did produce several important American designers, however. Both Calvin Klein (born Richard Klein, 1942–) and Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Lipschitz, 1939–) built their fashion empires in the polyester decade. Hot Pants Part of the flamboyant, sexually open style of fashion that produced the miniskirt (see entry under 1960s—Fashion in volume 4) in the 1960s, hot pants were dressy, ultra-short women’s shorts made of a variety of fabrics from velvet to leather. The design of hot pants allowed them to be worn shorter than the shortest micro-miniskirt and still provide some degree of modesty. Hot pants had been seen before, but they had been considered naughty and even a bit indecent, as they had mainly been worn by prostitutes and female nightclub performers. However, in the extravagantly flashy climate of the 1970s, many young women wore the new fashion. Allegheny Airlines even made them part of its official flight attendants’ uniform. Hot pants soon went out of style and are largely considered an embarrassing reminder of 1970s excess. —Tina Gianoulis For More Information “Hot Pants.” Yesterdayland. www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/ fashion/fa1459 (accessed March 22, 2002). Ralph Lauren (1939–) Ralph Lauren’s fashion empire has sold an old-fashioned Anglo American style of clothing to an adoring public since 1967. In fact, the flagship store on Madison Avenue in New York City sells far more than just clothes. The “Polo” brand offers its devotees the dream of an upper middle-class past. The tweeds, tartans, polo shirts, and boat shoes that feature the brand name all belong to a more comfortable, leisured life than most Americans can afford. Fittingly, the peak of Lauren’s fame came when he designed the wardrobe for Robert Redford (1937–) in the role of Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1974). To make his enduring American style, Lauren (born Ralph Lipschitz) combines images of “new-world” adventure with “old-world” aristocracy. He is revered and sometimes mocked for his conservative designs, but Lauren has proved adept at creating clothes that express America’s fantasies about itself. He also showed he could take a joke when he appeared as himself on Friends (see entry under 1990s—TV and Radio in volume 5) in 1999. —Chris Routledge For More Information Polo.com: Ralph Lauren. http://polo.com (accessed March 22, 2002). Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. Ralph Lauren, The Man Behind the Mystique. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988. Leisure Suit Fashionable during the 1970s, the leisure suit for men was a 956 mainstream response to the casual dress style of the hippie (see bowling, beatniks, and bell-bottoms Ralph Lauren 05 pendergast VOL 4 10/9/02 6:51 AM Page 956 entry under 1960s—The Way We Lived in volume 4) movement. Made of polyester (see entry under 1970s—Fashion in volume 4) fabric, often in bright colors and plaids, the leisure suit consisted of pants and a matching jacket, styled with an open collared. The suits helped make men’s fashion less conservative. The suits also were a forerunner of modern casual Fridays, when less formal clothes may be worn to the office. Although leisure suits represented somewhat of a breakthrough in men’s fashions, they were considered ridiculous by many conservatives and radicals alike. Since the 1970s, leisure suits have often been used as an example of a fashion mistake. However, the suits have left their mark on modern culture. The white leisure suit John Travolta (1954–) wore in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever (see entry under 1970s—Film and Theater in volume 4) sold at auction in the mid- 1990s for $145,000. Leisure-suit conventions, where men gather for competitions such as “Most Flammable Outfit,” have become popular events. A series of computer games created in the late 1990s and early 2000s features Leisure Suit Larry as the hopelessly uncool hero, in adventures with titles like “Land of the Lounge Lizards.”