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Information about Zoot Suit

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A soldier inspecting Zoot suits in Washington D.C. in 1942.
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Men wearing Zoot suits.
Zoot suit was a style of clothing popularized by African Americans, Mexican Americans and Italian Americans during the 1930s and 1940s.[1] [2] [3].

Creation

Harold C. Fox, the Chicago clothier and big-band trumpeter claimed credit for creating and naming the zoot suit. Its creation has also been attributed to Beale Street tailor, Louis Lettes; and Detroit retailer Nathan (Toddy) Elkus. [4]

Characteristics

A zoot suit has high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed pegged trousers (called tramas) and a long coat (called the carlango) with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. Often zoot suiters wear a felt hat with a long feather (called a tapa or tanda) and pointy, French-style shoes (called calcos). A young Malcolm X described the zoot suit as: "a killer-diller coat with a drape shape, reet pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic's cell." Zoot suits usually featured a key chain dangling from the belt to the knee or below, then back to a side pocket.

Zoot suits were for special occasions – such as a dance or a birthday party. The amount of material and tailoring required made them luxury items. Many young people wore a more moderate version of the "extra-bagged" pants or styled their hair in the signature "duck tail."

The oversized suit was an extravagant personal style and a declaration of freedom and auto-determination; although many people still consider it a "rebellious garment to the era."

History

The Zoot Suit first gained popularity in Harlem jazz culture in the late 1930s where they were initially called "drapes". [1]

The word "zoot", according to the Oxford English Dictionary, probably comes from a reduplication of the word 'suit'. It was probably first coined by Mexican American pachucos as part of their slang, "Caló", evolving from the Mexican Spanish pronunciation of the English word "suit" with the "s" taking on the sound of a "z". In any case, the zoot suit became very popular among young Mexican Americans, especially among those in Los Angeles who styled themselves as "pachucos"

Anti-Latino race riots in Los Angeles during World War II are known as the Zoot Suit Riots. Despite restrictions and discrimination, Zoot Suit culture prevailed.

In popular culture

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A 1943 drawing of Li'l Abner wearing a Zoot Suit Yokum.
Zoot suits were satirized by Al Capp in 1943 in the comic strip Li'l Abner, in which Abner Yokum appeared as "Zoot Suit Yokum", a gullible but near-indestructible man chosen by a clothing manufacturer to serve as role model for white youth through dangerous, staged heroic feats. The story ended with mainstream businessmen also taking to the zoot suit, whereupon it suddenly went out of style.

In a Tom & Jerry 1944 short, The Zoot Cat, Tom tries to win the affections of a female cat, but is rejected for being "corny". Sitting on the front porch, he hears an ad on the radio telling Tom that to be a "hep cat" he needs to wear a zoot suit. Tom immediately makes one out of a hammock and re-appears by the female cat, impressing her with his new "hep" clothes. However, when Jerry interferes, the suit gets wet and shrinks so much that the suit winds up fitting Jerry perfectly.

Zoot Suit is also the name of a musical play by Luis Valdez, featuring music from Daniel Valdez and Lalo Guerrero, the "father of Chicano music." When it debuted in 1979, Zoot Suit was the first Chicano play on Broadway. In 1981, Luis Valdez also directed a filmed version of the play.

Before they found success in the UK in 1965 as the look and voice of the London mod youth culture, British rock group The Who had tried to break into the record market in 1964 as The High Numbers, with a song called "Zoot suit". The lyrics, written by their manager and leading mod Peter Meaden, include "I got a zoot suit jacket with side vents five inches long." In mod use, the term zoot suit jacket meant a hip short box jacket with narrow lapels, three buttons and side vents, perhaps in white or ice blue color. In 1973, The Who released their rock opus, Quadrophenia, dedicated to the mods of the 1960s. A song called "Cut My Hair" contains the same lyrics about a zoot suit mentioned above.

Zoot suits and the Zoot Suit riots are also referenced in the novel Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

The prologue in James Ellroy's novel The Black Dahlia is centered around the Zoot Suit riots.

A Zoot Suit is the name of the powered armor in the Starfire novels by David Weber and Steve White.

In "Trick Or Treatment," a 1982 episode of M*A*S*H, Maxwell Klinger wears a Zoot Suit as a Halloween costume, and Hawkeye Pierce, dressed in a makeshift Superman costume, asks him, "Klinger, do you know how many zoots had to be killed to make that suit?"

In the mid-1970s TV series The Ghost Busters, Larry Storch's character wears a Zoot suit in every episode.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) uses the term Zoot Suit in the film Back to the Future.

Jim Carrey wore a bright yellow ostentatious Zoot Suit when playing the title character in the 1994 film The Mask.

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More, with Feeling", Sweet wears a Zoot Suit (the color of which he can change at will).

The early scenes of Spike Lee's film Malcolm X show the famous African-American activist in his younger days. Calling himself Detroit Red, he and his best friend, Shorty (played by Spike Lee) are seen dressed as Zoot Suit kids.

In the comic books and cartoons of Blue Falcon the "Zoot Suit Brutes" were recurring villains.

The Cherry Poppin' Daddies sang a song called "Zoot Suit Riot", and produced an album with that name.

In UK cannabis culture, the term "zoot" has come to mean a spliff (marijuana cigarette) due to the narrow bottoms and wide shoulder resembling how a spliff is commonly rolled.

In the climax Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, the unnamed protagonist is mistaken for a prominent Zoot-Suiter, adding to the confusion of the building race riot.

See also

References

1. ^ [2]
2. ^ [3]
3. ^ *[4]
4. ^ "Harold Fox, Who Took Credit For the Zoot Suit, Dies at 86", New York Times, August 1, 1996. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. “Harold C. Fox, the Chicago clothier and sometime big-band trumpeter who claimed credit for creating and naming the zoot suit with the reet pleat, the reave sleeve, the ripe stripe, the stuff cuff and the drape shape that was the stage rage during the boogie-woogie rhyme time of the early 1940's, died on Sunday at his home in Siesta Key, Florida. He was 86. ... Never mind that the zoot suit has been variously attributed to a Beale Street tailor named Louis Lettes and a Detroit retailer known as Nathan (Toddy) Elkus. Anyone who doubts that a fashion that became widely associated with black and Hispanic swells, World War II drugstore cowboys and Harvest Moon jitterbuggers was actually created by one man, even a trumpet-playing Chicago clothier who once took his own integrated band to the Apollo Theater in Harlem, wouldn't get much of an argument from Mr. Fox.1996"> 

External links

Topics related to Chicanos and Mexican-Americans
Terms: Chicano · La Raza · Latino · Mexican-American · Hispanic
Pre-Chicano Movement: Mexican-American History · Mexican-American War · Sleepy Lagoon Trial · Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo · Zoot Suit Riots
Chicano Movement: Aztlán · Catolicos Por La Raza · Chicanismo · Chicano Blowouts · Chicano Moratorium · El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán · El Plan de Santa Bárbara · Farm Worker Rights Campaign · Land Grant Struggle · Colegio César Chávez
Supreme Court Cases: Hernandez v. Texas · Plyler v. Doe · Mendez v. Westminster
Culture: Chicano Park · Chicano rap · Chicano rock · Cholo · Estrada Courts Murals · Lowrider · Pachuco · Teatro Campesino · Tortilla art · Zoot suit
Lists and Categories: List of Caló words and expressions · List of Chicano poets · Majority Hispanic U.S. Cities · Notable Chicanos · Notable Hispanic Americans · · http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Chicano/Mexican-American&action=edit edit this footer
African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.[1] In the United States the term is generally used for Americans with sub-Saharan African ancestry.
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26,781,547
9% of the U.S. population [1]
Regions with significant populations United States
California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada
See also: List of Mexican American communities
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Italian
17,235,187 Americans
5.6% of the US population (2005) [1]
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New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New England, Illinois, California, Florida, Ohio
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City of Chicago

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Nickname: "The Windy City", "The Second City", "ChiTown", "Hog Butcher for the World", "City of the Big Shoulders", "The City That Works"
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big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s, although there are many big-bands around nowadays.
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trumpet is a musical instrument in the brass family. The trumpet has the highest register in the brass section; a standard B flat trumpet has a range comparable to the B flat cornet, a piccolo trumpet is an octave higher.
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Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles. It is a significant location in African-American history and the history of the blues.
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Motto
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
Anthem
"La Marseillaise"


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Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,[1] was an American Black Muslim minister and a one-time spokesman for the Nation of Islam.
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The Duck's Ass is a haircut style that was popular during the 1950s. It is also called the Duck's Tail, the Ducktail, or simply D.A.

History

Joe Cirello, a barber from Philadelphia, claimed to have invented the Duck's Ass in 1940.
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Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, long known as a major black cultural and business center. After being associated for much of the twentieth century with black culture, but also crime and poverty, it is now experiencing a social and economic
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Jazz is an original American musical art form that originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in and around New Orleans.

Overview

Jazz has been called "America's only original art form.
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Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

1900s 1910s 1920s - 1930s - 1940s 1950s 1960s
1930 1931 1932 1933 1934
1935 1936 1937 1938 1939

- -
- The 1930s
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The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language.
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Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process by which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated.

Reduplication is used both in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc.
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26,781,547
9% of the U.S. population [1]
Regions with significant populations United States
California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada
See also: List of Mexican American communities
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Pachucos were Mexican American youths who developed their own subculture during the 1930s and 1940s in the Southwestern United States. They wore distinctive clothes (such as Zoot Suits) and spoke their own dialect (Caló).
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For the dialect spoken by Spanish Roma, see Caló (Spanish Romani).
Caló (also known as Pachuco) is an argot or slang of Mexican Spanish initially spoken in the first half of the 20th century in the Southwestern United States by members of the zoot
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26,781,547
9% of the U.S. population [1]
Regions with significant populations United States
California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada
See also: List of Mexican American communities
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City of Los Angeles

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Nickname: The City of Angels, L.A.
Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California
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State
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Pachucos were Mexican American youths who developed their own subculture during the 1930s and 1940s in the Southwestern United States. They wore distinctive clothes (such as Zoot Suits) and spoke their own dialect (Caló).
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Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots that erupted in Los Angeles, California during World War II, between sailors and soldiers stationed in the city and Mexican American youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored.
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Al Capp (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979) was an American cartoonist best known for the satiric comic strip, Li'l Abner. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie and Slats and Long Sam.
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Li'l Abner was a comic strip in United States newspapers, featuring a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished town of Dogpatch. Written and drawn by Al Capp, the strip ran from 1934 through 1977.
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Tom and Jerry is an Academy Award-winning animated cartoon series of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer theatrical shorts created, written and directed by animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
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The Zoot Cat
Tom and Jerry series

The title card of The Zoot Cat
Directed by Bill Hanna
Joseph Barbera

Animation by Kenneth Muse
Ray Patterson
Irven Spence
Pete Burness
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Zoot Suit
'

Music Daniel Valdez and Lalo Guerrero
Lyrics Lalo Guerrero
Book Luis Valdez
Based upon The Sleepy Lagoon murder trial
Productions 1979 Broadway
1981 film Zoot Suit
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Luis Valdez (born June 26, 1940) is an American playwright, writer and film director.

He is regarded as the father of Chicano theater in the United States.[1]

Biography

Education


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Eduardo "Lalo" Guerrero (December 24, 1916 – March 17, 2005), was a Mexican-American guitarist, singer and farm labor activist best known for his strong influence on today's Latin musical artists.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1940s  1950s  1960s  - 1970s -  1980s  1990s  2000s
1976 1977 1978 - 1979 - 1980 1981 1982

Also: 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins.

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