A zoot suit (occasionally spelled zuit suit) is a suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. This style of clothing was popularized by Mexican-Americans during the late 1930s and the 1940s. It started during the Jazz Age in Harlem and slowly spread throughout other ethnic-neighborhoods across America. Malcolm X was known to have loved zoot suits in his early days as Detroit Red.[1][2][3] In Britain the bright-coloured suits with velvet lapels worn by Teddy Boys bore a slight resemblance to zoot suits in the length of the jacket.
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A zoot suit has high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. Often zoot suiters wear a felt hat with a long feather and pointy, French-style shoes. 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".[4] Zoot suits usually featured a watch chain dangling from the belt to the knee or below, then back to a side pocket. Zoot suit wearers' dates often wore flared skirts and long coats.[5]
The amount of material and tailoring required made them luxury items, so much so that the U.S. War Production Board said that they wasted materials that should be devoted to the World War II war effort.[6] When Life published photographs of zoot suiters in 1942, the magazine joked that they were "solid arguments for lowering the Army draft age to include 18 year olds."[5] This extravagance, which many considered unpatriotic in wartime, was a factor in the Zoot Suit Riots. Wearing the oversized suit was a declaration of freedom and self-determination, even rebelliousness.[7]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word zoot probably comes from a reduplication of suit. The creation and naming of the zoot suit have been variously attributed to Harold C. Fox, a Chicago clothier and big-band trumpeter;[8] Louis Lettes, a Memphis tailor;[9] and Nathan (Toddy) Elkus, a Detroit retailer.[10][11]
Zoot suits first gained popularity in Harlem jazz culture in the late 1930s, where they were initially called drapes.[12] The zoot suit became very popular among young Mexican Americans, especially pachucos in Los Angeles. Anti-Mexican youth riots in Los Angeles during World War II are known as the Zoot Suit Riots.
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