Zoot Suits?

[MrBern]

I like this link on the zoot suit riots.
http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/u7sf/u7materials/cosgrove.html

PBS did a show on the riots as well earlier this year
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot/index.html

 

[Wild Root]

I saw that special. Funny how LA outlawed the Zoot. In fact, it is said that law is still instated! It's still illegal to wear a Zoot suit in LA. Reason it's not enforced is because no one wears them any more and there isn't any problem when some one does.

Who knew!

Root.

 

[The Wolf]

Very few people can pull off the Zoot. I can not pull off that look.
Cab had the attitude to make it look good.
By the way when Cab Calloway was playing in London in 1991 the ad referred to him as Cab Calloway from The Blues Brothers movie. Holy Cow! That's like saying Orson Welles of the Paul Masson wine commercials.

The Wolf

 

[Wild Root]

Yeah, you know that stuff just burns me! Cab Calloway was such a pop star WAY before the Blues Bros ever got started! He was hitting it big before Dan and John were even thought of!

I know what you mean about the Zoot. I can't pull off that look! I can dress as a "White" jitterbug whould have dressed, but not as a colored jitterbug of those days. If I lived back then and wore a Zoot, I would have gotten my A%@ Kicked!

Cab Calloway of the Bluse Brothers... BAH! What ever, stupes!

Root.

 

[jitterbugdoll]

Having worked in bridal fashion for several years, the zoot suit came up on many occasions, both for wedding and prom wear. I would always try to politely point out the original message behind this fashion statement, with varying degrees of success. A lot of people who wanted to incorporate 'vintage glamour' into their weddings would come in asking for a zoot suit--I would usually try to steer them towards something a little more classic and wedding appropriate!

But again, as Wingnut pointed out, people do latch on to certain fashion elements and will argue with you for no apparent reason. This is not limited to menswear, as I have argued with women over vintage and/or vintage inspired dresses and wedding gowns as well! Part of the problem also stems from modern designers who tout their ‘vintage-inspired’ collections—and these collections often have not one iota of vintage design, or *were* inspired by another era that designer incorrectly identified (for example, they are 1930s-style pieces, but the designer refers to them as 1950s-style.)

 

[Wild Root]

Oh, tell me about it!

I met this nice young lady at a swing dance once. We started to hang out a lot.

She told me no one asked her to her Prom. I was shocked! So, I asked her to her be my date. She was very happy I did. Well, that meant I had to rent a tux or something. I didn't have as nice of a collection as I do now.

Well, I went to the tux rental place and picked out a cut away with striped pants. Very classic seeing the theme was TITANIC.

I showed up to her place and her folks just went nuts when I arrived! They told me that they, and every one else was expecting to see me in a Zoot Suit! Well, I told them that they had no such things in 1912. And also I had taste in wearing something appropriate for the occasion.

We got there and there were some guys in Zoot’s. Talk bout nasty polyester black or white Zoot’s with the black cardboard fedoras with white ribbons you buy from Toy's "R" Us!

Every one came up to my date and I and told us we looked more 1912 vintage then any one there! It was great!

Root.

 

[jitterbugdoll]

Here's one to make you cringe--when Dumb and Dumber came out, quite a few guys came in looking for pastel blue tuxedos. We actually had two (leftover from the 80s), and I believe sold both of them. Oh, the horror!

Also, we once rented a purple tuxedo (complete with purple vest) to another prom kid. Now, he was a bit...portly, shall we say, and with very red hair. When completely suited up, he looked exactly like Barney!

But really, my biggest complaint would be the number of guys who tried to sag their tuxedo pants. Seriously folks, why bother getting dressed at all?

Anyway, back to the topic of zoot suits!

 

[Big Man]

Here's one to make you cringe--when Dumb and Dumber came out, quite a few guys came in looking for pastel blue tuxedos. We actually had two (leftover from the 80s), and I believe sold both of them. Oh, the horror! ...

Ouch! That hurts! I thought I looked especially dashing in my Carolina Blue tux when I attended my Jr/Sr prom back in 1973. I guess style (or lack thereof) is relative.

 

[Phil_in_CS]

Yeah, you know that stuff just burns me! Cab Calloway was such a pop star WAY before the Blues Bros ever got started!
Root.

I saw a PBS special about Milt Hinton, a great jazz bass player and photographer, who played for Cab in the 1930's. Believe it or not, he said he was getting paid $150 per week then; that's huge! $150 per week in the middle of the depression?! Cab must have been raking it in to pay 15 or more guys like that.

He said Cab insisted they spend money on clothes, and they couldn't get off the train unless they were dressed well; he felt they were performing from the moment they got off the train.

Said Cab owned 2 pullman cars, and 2 baggage cars, one of which was for his Lincoln. They'd often pull on to side railings and sleep in the pullman's, since they couldn't always find hotel rooms.

 

[jitterbugdoll]

Phil--in 1973, powder blue was the norm--so you're safe from the comment I made above! The question is, looking back--would you wear the same tux today?

 

[Phil_in_CS]

Phil--in 1973, powder blue was the norm--so you're safe from the comment I made above! The question is, looking back--would you wear the same tux today?

The only tux I wore in 1973 was as a 10 year old in my sisters wedding. Dove gray morning coats with striped ascots, not bad at all. (I think mom picked rather than my sister, or we'd likely have been in powder blue)

I don't think I'd go for the tweed tux; but most of what the guys in that band wore was very nice. Hinton took 60,000 or more photos of musicians from 1930 to the late 1980's; his books would be a good example of how the hip dressed through that whole range.

He played with Cab, Dizzy, Duke, later Sinatra, Gleason; hundreds of albums.

 

[Big Man]

Phil--in 1973, powder blue was the norm--so you're safe from the comment I made above! The question is, looking back--would you wear the same tux today?

Looking back to the 1970's, I guess I would still have chosen that same tux because, in the context of the time, it really did look sharp. However, looking back through today's eyes, I wouldn't be caught dead in an outfit like that . Of course I don't know what was worse, the Carolina blue tuxes of the 70's or the polyester leisure suits of the 80's.

It would appear style and good taste stopped somewhere around the mid 1950's

 

[Angelicious]

To answer the question as to why so many people think that any suit of the '30s - '40s era is a 'zoot' suit, popular culture has a tendency to take the most outlandish, noticable feature of a trend, style or subculture, and focus in on it.

Also, many modern WASP types think of non-zoot vintage as being "like Grandad", or as someone said, "gangster wear". Zoots seem, to many, to be the "cooler" option compared to Grandad, but less of a cliché than the pinstripe "Capone" suit.

Films like "The Mask" and the retro revival of the mid- to late-90s have also fixed the zoot in the minds of current pop-culture.

 

[Angelicious]

Very few people can pull off the Zoot. I can not pull off that look.

That's funny, because the main reason so many boys (and men) *still* choose zoots for proms/weddings/etc. - and I'm talking zoots, not those awful tacky polyester "zoot tuxes" that don't drape right - is because they just look and feel so damned good in them!

I think that almost anyone looks good in a (properly fitted, bespoke) zoot suit. But then, I'm biased... [angel]

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

A zoot suit is basically a costume. It is not really designed to look good but to stand out in the crowd and identity one as part of a certain group.

 

[Angelicious]

I like Zoot suits, but only from reading Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Mmm... I like Zoot suits for many reasons. One of which is that I'm very into researching WWII and the Jazz & Big Band eras as experienced by the "underclasses" - immigrants of all stripes (from Irish/Jewish/Polish/other Europeans to the Hispanics/Mexicans) or other native peoples, in the US, UK, and various colonies.

[Bear in mind it's 1 in the morning and I don't have my references to hand. Any mistakes in the following are heartily apologised for!)

That was pretty much the essence of the zoot suit, outside of stage costume/celebrity - it was rebel/protest clothing. Many of those Mexican (and Puerto Rican, African American, Italian, French Canadian, and other) kids at the time lived in fairly awful conditions, caught half-way between their parents' traditionalism and the shiny new culture around them - which they weren't allowed to take part in, being poor and non-white. Many of them were hugely patriotic, and yet because many were not US citizens, they were not allowed to enlist. Many were even barred from the war effort, outside of manufacturing. This frustrated many of them; a fact which was ignored by servicemen and politicians alike, as immigrant youth were dismissed en masse as criminals and ne'er-do-wells.

These conditions, fuelled by the kind of edginess that often appears in wartime, along with the usual problems found between lower-class immigrants and their middle/upper class "native" compatriots, made a fairly simmering resentment, culminating in things like the LA Zoot Suit Riots, and the protest actions up in Canada (can't remember if it was Toronto or Quebec?). The Zoot was a protest action, and a rebellion. It was deliberately different, it was offensive and selfish in a time of cloth and manufacturing rationing, and it was a visible mark of hedonism in a time when most sober, hardworking citizens were tightening their belts, "making do and mending". Servicemen, in particular took it as a personal insult (and maybe they were just spoiling for a fight).

These kids were often 1st generation Americans/Canadians, and were trying to carve out an identity for themselves. They didn't fit with their parents' generation, with their old-fashioned, old-world morals and judgements, but they weren't "good enough" to join in the new, glossy, magazine world of the "new America". Zoots were a first step in that journey for many of them.

In fact, that's one of the reasons zoots are still so popular in some areas today - many Hispanic men and boys have taken it as a "uniform", a cultural dress for today.

Here's another link for y'all, before I stop hogging the bandwidth:

http://www.suavecito.com

 

[Angelicious]

A zoot suit is basically a costume. It is not really designed to look good but to stand out in the crowd and identity one as part of a certain group.

I think "good" is in the eye of the beholder.

Also, there is a difference between the extreme "stage" zoots (like that pic of Cab posted earlier), a very fashionable zoot (similar to the fancier ones people can buy today), a "standard" zoot (less drape, the kind a well-off and trendy cat could have worn at the time), and a "realistic" zoot (just modified suits that joe average could afford in wartime, seen in a previous photo).

"Stage" zoots certainly stand out, but even I wouldn't say they look "good". The more moderate ones can't be all bad - where do you think Giorgio Armani got his inspiration from?

But really, I think zoot style just comes down to personal preference... If you're an Astaire or Bogart kind of a guy, you're probably not going to feel comfortable dressed like El Pachuco. Kind of like the way someone used to wearing Boroni would feel if they tried to dress like Dr. Dre.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

To some extent there is an objective rationale behind clothing design. Given certain cultural ideals of what beauty is, most clothing and ornamentation is designed to maximize or enhance those ideals.

In addition though, clothing itself can be a means of communication. And as you said, the zoot suit was a form of "protest" clothing. To me this is the defining reason for its existance. If you look at zoot suits from a purely sartorial standpoint the things look completely absurd. Even the "realistic zoot" picture to me looks terrible.

However as a means of communication the zoot suit is quite good. Nobody is going to mistake a zoot suit for anything else. And it sets the wearer apart from normal society certainly. This is why I say the zoot suit is pure costume. It is a type of clothing which cannot and never could be worn in normal society. Perhaps given the right preconditions the zoot suit could have become an element of accepted day-to-day fashion, who knows.

 

[Dr. Shocker]

ok as I do still like and enjoy the zoot style and have since I was young i have two questions for those of you interested in the banter.......

One do you assume zoots were purly protest suits against the war effort?

second do you feel that no one wore them for no other reason?

see I think there are those who did wear the zoot as a protest but remember like so many fashions of any era many folks jumped on the bandwagon of a style making it a fashon......not all people who dressed like hippies were really there to protest the war many of them were there for the social or drug aspects......now I have always been all american and loved zoots.....and it wasn't until my early 20s I even heard the concept of zoots as anti-american or protest statment......if you want check out Zoot Suit the movie.....it offers another point of view......

 

[Brad Bowers]

One do you assume zoots were purly protest suits against the war effort?

second do you feel that no one wore them for no other reason?

Only American servicemen saw the zoot suit as an anti-war protest, for the reasons of fabric rationing mentioned earlier. For the Mexican-Americans and other Chicanos in their late teens and early twenties, it was a symbol of their social estrangement from American society. For those young people who could not integrate into society, and did not want to integrate, it was their way of indentifying themselves among their own subculture, as well as a showing their refusal to conform to societal norms. Los Angeles police estimated that as many as two-thirds of young Mexican men wore the zoot suits.

Typically, Anglo-Americans saw this subculture as subversive, which resulted in increasing police and vigilante actions against these youths, culminating in the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial in January 1943 and the Zoot Suit Riots in June 1943.

I hate to see young white guys wearing a zoot suit today, simply because they think everyone wore them back then, and are ignorant of the racial divide that the suits represent. The suit represents a time period to most people, and sadly, the true meaning has been lost.

Brad