Chad Sanborn
A-List Customer
- Messages
- 428
- Location
- Atlanta, Ga
I have seen pictures of different suits on this site. But no Zoot Suits?
Chad
Chad
Wild Root said:For those who may like to know I give you the fallowing…
The Zoot suit. A popular look among the colored youth of the late 1930’s and into the early 1940’s. This was a fad that started by some pop band leaders of the time. Cab Calloway sported wildly tailored suits on occasions in Soundies and film. The term Zoot means extreme or wild. Some I talk to think every suit from those years were Zoots! Not so by any means possible.
Zoot suits were suits that had pleated baggy tapered pants with a small cuff hugging the ankle. The coat was long as a top coat of the time with broad pointed lapels.
These trends were embraced by thugs, street gangs and pimps. Jitterbugs never really sported such attire. Some did and some didn’t.
With the out brake of WWII in the US, these suits became something anti American! They would find them selves picking fights with service men. They were called draft dodgers and many other names. With all things being rationed for the war, fabric was hard to come by. When a youngster or a young man would have a suit such as this made it was an out word statement that they couldn’t care about what’s happing “over there�.
The LA riots of 1943 were very bad. Involved sailors and other service men in the area. Soon civilians were part of the madness!
The Zoot has been a popular choice for swing dancers since the swing revival of the 1990’s. The big brimmed fedoras with Peacock feather, draped shape and stuffed cuff has become more popular today then it was when it was new. The Zoot suits of yester year were mostly controversial then excepted by the public.
Never the less we have the idea that all boys and men wore them. I wonder how that came in to being.
Root.