Can anyone tell me the name of this men’s upper-body garment? It resembles a suit jacket without sleeves, buttons, lapels, external pockets, or a collar. It has a wide built-in buckled belt around the waist. It’s worn over a button-up collared shirt. You can see an example modelled by the inimitable Mr. Furley.
Bonus questions: Were such garments ever popular, and if so, when? (The photo I provide dates from about 1981, but given the notorious lack of fashion sense of the model we probably shouldn’t make any assumptions regarding its popularity in that year.) Are they still made today?
I’m saying not. The length of the garment in the photo is about mid-thigh (like a suit jacket, as **psychonaut **notes). It appears that there is no closure other than the incorporated belt. Indeed, it appears that the edges don’t overlap in any way.
Having said that, I don’t know what it is – only what it isn’t.
No way… a waistcoat is designed to be worn under a suit jacket. It’s therefore short and close-fitting. Furley’s garment is just as long and loose as a suit jacket; it could never be worn under one.
I’d have figured that it was simply a vest and that the belt was on the pants. (If the tails are clearly behind the belt (if one has a video of the scene), then I would think that having that character “tuck in” his vest was simply part of the show’s premise that he was pretty clueless.
I do not recall any belted vests from that period. (They might have existed, but I do not recall them.)
No, the belt is definitely on the garment, not on the pants. Maybe that screen capture doesn’t show that distinctly, but if you watch some episodes of Three’s Company, you’ll see Mr. Furley wear that garment quite often. (I made the screen capture myself from the Season 6 DVD.)
Maybe it’s just a weird-looking vest, but I thought it was a significant enough departure from what most people think of as a vest that it was probably classified as (and named) something else.
There were plenty, but usually cable-knit and made for women. Like this, only this is a new “retro” model.
In fact, I don’t have anything to back this up, but I always though that an awful lot of Mr. Roper’s clothes were women’s pieces. I always wrote this off to my lack of “getting” the depth of male flamboyance during the era. But maybe it’s simply a woman’s vest.
I am horrified to admit that I remember this fashion from my adolescence. Damn, I was hot in my floppy felt hat, bell bottoms, and vest! And the wishbook link was posted here in another thread. So I put two and two together and scanned the catalogs of the years that seemed right.
Nah. A liesure suit ewas a suit, (if a particularly ugly one), with slacks and jacket cut from the same cloth.
I’d have still called the thing a vest (or maye a belted vest). Seeing freckafree’s catalog photo, I do remember that piece of clothing, but my memory is more along the lines of the kids clothes in the Sears catalog, with the buckle being above the navel and below the sternum rather than at or below the navel as in the OP’s photo. (I’d still call it a vest.)
A lot of 70’s fashion was inspired by a notion of “medieval”. That vest and those big buckles have a Robin Hood-as-seen-on-TV-air to them. Is there an expert on medieval fashion around that can tell us if such garments actually existed and what they were called? The Medieval Dutch word for a vest worn as outer layer would be "wambuis ".
Leisure suits typically had oversized patch pockets on the jacket, and were generally made in “fashion” colors. Men, who had previously been confined to displaying color in their hankies, ties, and undies for the past few decades, rejoiced in being able to wear all the colors in the rainbow. And all the colors that WEREN’T in the rainbow, too. Guys wore leisure suits when they weren’t required to wear business suits, but still needed more formality than Tshirt and jeans. Sort of like today’s khakis.
