Zooties

The zoot-suiter style, brought back into vogue in the 1980s by Kid Creole and Sugar Coated, Hernandez, and Chris Sullivan with his Blue Rondo. The zoot suit style had its origins in New York jazz clubs like the Onyx and Famous Doors towards the end of the 1930s. It was reserved for the kind of men who frequented the clubs on 52nd Street, renamed Manhattan’s “Swing Street,” or Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom where New York’s black dandies used to parade. These were called Zoot-suiters or Zooties, from the style of suits they wore. Zoot is a distortion and phonetic doubling of suit, to underline the exaggeration and taste for excess that typified this new fashion. And everything really was exaggerated and oversized. Starting with the double-breasted jacket two or three sizes bigger than necessary that wraps around the chest and ends in swathes around the knees, and the pants with the waistband up around the chest as if a waistcoat had been grafted onto a pair of breeches with a very low crotch. Pastel hues and tartans were the preferred choices for the fabrics. Fancy accessories of all kinds and long hand-painted watch chains add to the whole effect. The principle of showy consumerism was pushed to the limit, given the profusion and waste of material involved whilst the USA was on the brink of involvement in World War II. Given that state of affairs, in 1941 the American War Production Board set out strict rules to regulate the manufacturing of garments to the millimeter. Paradoxically, as often happens, it was precisely this prohibition that sanctioned the use of a style that in principle was too radical to catch on through its use by a small minority.