The Cisko Kid suit were designed in early 1971. The first versions were the 2 piece. These suits were primarily worn in the first Vegas season in 1971, and partly in Tahoe. In 1974, Elvis had more of the suits made, with his new measurments. These suits were only worn of stage. According to photos it would seem only the powder blue version, and the black version with white leather were used.
All of the suits consisted of a vest style jacket, pants with flower design, and a shirt combo of Elvis likes at the time. The vests came in two designs. First design had no flower pattern on the reverse, while the 2nd versions did. There is no real reason as to the change. All the cisko kid suits had the same length pants, or leg portion of the jumpsuit.
They were all cut to Elvis desired on stage height of 6'2. Of couse Elvis true height was only 5'11 3/4. The reason for the height difference, was the fact that Elvis wore lifts in his shoes, plus the normal heel of the boot, which was 1 1/2 inches on average. All suits were made of a heavier Italian wool gaberdine material. This was of course the norm in the early 70's.
The 2 piece suits came in the following color combos:
All leather on both the one piece and 2 pieces were made out of pigskin. They were actually hand painted not dyed.
One piece color combos:
The 2-piece red leather and the one-piece green cisko are in hands of private collectors, and the rest are at Graceland.
Daniel Calderaro
(Some of the pics are from the fantastic website: Silvester's Elvis Pages)
