The improbable comeback of the leather blazer has been in the works for a few years now. You could point to a few sources. Balenciaga designer Demna Gvasalia and his obsession with good-bad American normcore. A strangely posh Adam Sandler running through the diamond district in Uncut Gems. In due time, that same magazine covered how to find your own leather blazer — and now Kanye West has been photographed in slouchy numbers with increasing frequency.

It’s hard to think of a leather blazer without thinking of 1990s stand-up comics. (And Anthony Bourdain, of course.) Comedians and stand-ups of yesteryear embraced the look in unique ways: you You’d see it on late-night shows and HBO specials alongside other more quirky modes. And while comedians were never really considered a stylish bunch, it turns out the ’90s stand-up circuit is full of clothes that have also been embraced by today’s more adventurous dressers. . Looking at photos of decades-old comic books and the like, and the overlap between then and now is hard to miss. Leather pants and berets. Tinted glasses and fuzzy sweaters. Baggy blazers of all kinds. The Venn diagram of the fashion of today’s downtown scenes and the hip comedians of the 90s is essentially a circle.

When it came to a baggy suit, you could count on Chris Rock and Pauly Shore to pull it off. These cuts are best described as “elegantly loose” and they would fit right in with today’s most stylish tailoring. Before Jon Stewart became a household name on The daily show, he could wear an equally casual suit. He also wasn’t afraid of the aforementioned leather blazer. Rock and Shore also had other clothing tricks up their sleeves. Rock could get deliciously grungy and still look great – like a modern-day Channing Tatum – in baggy jeans, a leather jacket and a cap from one of streetwear’s OGs, Fuct. Shore was known for her flashier fare, hitting the red carpet in everything from animal prints and leather pants to an oversized Demna-level blazer.