Zoot suits were first popularized among marginalized youth in the late 30s and 40s.Young Filipino Americans, Mexican Americans (especially in LA: “Pachucos”), African Americans, and Italian Americans, people who had no voice, who were pushed to the “margins” of society.The zoot-suit looked like an exaggerated “English Drape” suit (in fact, initially called “drapes”):
- Wide trousers with tight cuffs
- long jacket with long, wide lapels and very wide padded shoulder
- "ducktail” hair style
There are many stories as to where the zoot suit originated, most of which show more about the motivations of the teller, than the actual beginnings of the style:
- purchased by a black bus worker, Clyde Duncan, from a tailor’s shop in Georgia, inspired by Rhett Butler in “Gone with the Wind.”
- in Harlem jazz culture and exhibitionist stage costumes of band leaders
- derived from military uniforms and imported from Britain
- by Filipino men when they first immigrated to the United States, mostly in California.
So how did this style emerge in the face of all these negative pressures? Begin with collective selection ...
Who is involved in Blumer’s “collective” of collective selection? buyers, designers, and the “public.” Collectively, through their interactions, they decide what fashion will look like.
Fashion becomes a language by which to communicate ourselves to one another. Because fashion is what Blumer calls a “social happening,” it can never be truly individual, or expressive of our true inner selves. It is always a compromise between being legible (socially understood), and expressing our individuality (socially incomprehensible).
Through our interactions, this mode of communication changes and evolves, and rather quickly. (This happens in language as well, albeit over a longer period of time.) By this process, the "grammar" of clothing becomes highly socially inscribed; every seam and detail comes to have great meaning because of the myriad ways it has been worn by countless people. On the other hand, like any cliche, the more it appears, the less it seems to mean ... the more it comes to look like a uniform. The suit had been evolving since the 14th Century (origins in military dress, parallels with military vexation with its adulteration). The suit as it was in the 40s, was a result of a great deal of history. It had the character of a social given, while carrying the social energy of centuries of historical evolution.
This brings us back to Blumer’s model. If fashion history is the result of the interactions between designers, buyers, and the "public," who counts as the “public”? The BUYING public. The people who “count” are those who are willing and able to participate in the fashion process. So, if fashion is an inherently social process where participants constantly look for new and better ways to communicate (called changing collective taste), or together grope for the proximate future (Blumer, 6), this is only the taste and the future of their particular collectivity. The margins are distinctly missing from this picture.
Zoot-suiters could not exert their difference through their “own language,” because, being outside the system, no one would notice. Instead, they used the “grammar” of the society that was excluding them. Cliché (or classic) is at one time drained of meaning, and the only structure under which communication can take place. Suits asserted minorities' difference within mainstream society, simultaneously symbolizing their reliance upon it.
Aspects of the suit were exaggerated to the point of appearing “cartoonish” or extremely stylized. According to Cosgrove, “Zoot meant something worn or performed in an extravagant style” (1-2).
Etym. may come from rhyming slang, a rhyming descriptor for “suit.” It has also been said to come from the Mexican pronunciation of suit, where the s sounds like a z.[Octavio Paz: “Their attitude reveals an obstinate, almost fanatical will-to-be, but this will affirms nothing spsecific except their determination … not to be like those around them” (Labyrinth, 5-6). Is difference/presence the only statement that can be made within a pattern?]
People found this style unsettling. Cosgrove talks about zoot-suiters not as much as fascinating (like a dandy would be) but as fearful: a “refusal” and a “subcultural gesture.” He quotes Ralph Ellison from “The Invisible Man”: “they were ‘the stewards of something uncomfortable’” (1). Zoot-suits were a much more powerful statement than, for instance, wearing extreme versions of clothing from the minorities' countries of historical origin. (the equivalent of screaming in your own interior language … you would either be ignored or end up in the psychiatric ward).
The "Zoot Suit Riots" took place in the early forties. There had been a long standing tension between zoot-suiters and American servicemen (the most patriotic versus seemingly the least). In the time surrounding and during the riots, zoot suiters were beaten and stripped of their clothes. Often the suit would be burned. The servicemen were not held responsible for these assaults, and were actually lauded as heroes, supported by the police. The police did, however, preemptively arrest the “Pachucos." The riots did not stop until the military prevented servicemen from entering Los Angeles.
Discussion:
What other exaggerated versions of “classic” or commonly seen clothing forms can you think of from the present or recent history? Who has worn these styles?
Give examples of forms of dress today or in the recent past that have been associated with physical violence.
Has anyone ever worn anything that made you mad?
Have you ever worn anything that was fashionable and thought-provoking at the same time?
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