Monday, February 25, 2013

With Striped Zoot Jacket That Salts Can Plainly See




















Consider the Zoot Suit, an "extreme style" that swirled around the world like this past year's Gangnam Style and still-ongoing Harlem Shake. Race. Class. Gender. Style. Status Quo. Pied Pipers. Fashion statement. Join the bandwagon. Crackdown.

What's it all about, Alfie? Can you dig?

Great Depression, World War Two, Race Riot. In the Navy, Wild in the Streets. "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift . . ." It's all Zoot!




















New books include: Kathy Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and Elizabeth Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, March 21, 2013).

Today's Rune: Warrior.
  

3 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Sort of like the Nehru Jacket of the early 1970s I guess.

Charles Gramlich said...

Is the pants around the butt along the same lines of extreme styles?

jodi said...

Erik, I love Cherry Poppin' Daddies version. "Zoot suit riot, throw back a bottle of beer!"