“When I said ‘realistic ’70s movie’ I meant one that excludes X-factor people. Nobody wants to admit this and I’m sure I’ll be called an elitist for saying so, but only semi-clueless bridge-and-tunnel people from lower-middle-class ‘meathead’ neighborhoods (i.e., those who weren’t connected to dynamic big-city culture) wore terrible hairstyles and laughably grotesque ’70s threads.
![](/images/column/newyork2013/threads.jpg)
Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale in David O. Russell’s American Hustle.
“I was bopping around on the fringes in the mid to late ’70s and I never wore a fucking leisure suit or elephant collars or gaudy sunglasses or had godawful ‘big-hair.’ Okay, I wore flared jeans but I was mainly into T-shirts and Frye boots andBrian DePalma-styled khaki bush-safari jackets and that whole American Gigolo/Giorgi Armani/Milan-influenced thing (i.e., nifty sport jackets, Italian loafers, shirts with small pointed collars).” — from a 4.13.13 post called “Sartorial Nightmare.”
![](https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/themes/amory/patreon-banner.jpg)