professorpski: Zoot Suit from Augusta Auctions: Men’s Fashion Or Costume?Zoot suits became pop
professorpski: Zoot Suit from Augusta Auctions: Men’s Fashion Or Costume?Zoot suits became popular with African-American entertainers like Cab Calloway during the late 1930s and early 1940s. They made for a great stage presence as they exaggerated all proportions, making for a literally spectacular look. Notice how a regular fedora looks positively puny set above the suit. Calloway wore enormous hats to go along with his suits. The shoulders are enormous and padded, and here the mix of fabrics places horizontal stripes to widen the torso of the jacket as well. The sleeves are big and then must be narrowed towards the hemline so as not to get in the way. The pants are enormous too and then the hems with cuff is pegged, again, to make it easier for the wearer to move. Notice the high waistband. While men wore their pants higher in the 1930s than they do today, this waistline was so high that suspenders made more sense. It has no label, so it may have been custom made or made in a small shop. Young men of all races who loved music got excited about zoot suits and wore their own. Then, as now, people looked to celebrities for daring styles. So it is possible this was street wear, but the pockets with double bellows are soooooo enormous that this makes me think they may have been some entertainer’s stage costume. Of course, I should not underestimate the sartorial wackiness of young men. Remember, when they were all wearing sagging pants? Zoot suits got a bad name because of the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 when white US servicemen in California blamed all wearers of zoot suits for crimes they said were committed by young men wearing zoot suits. They attacked Mexican-American zoot suiters at random and tore off their clothing. The suits also seemed unpatriotic during an era when fabric had to be preserved for the war effort. Disney made a short film that suggested zoot suits and Nazism were linked. Some scholars argue that zoot suits were worn by disaffected young people as a way of rejecting a society which had rejected them, while other argue it was simply a fashion trend adopted by young people of all kinds as something new. This one was sold by Augusta Auctions for a whooping $78,000. To see what the auction house will be selling next, go here: https://augusta-auction.com/ -- source link