Zoot suit

A zoot suit is a man's suit with wide-legged, tight-cuffed, or "pegged," trousers; a long coat with wide lapels, and wide, padded shoulders. It was described by one young fan at the time as "a killer-diller coat with a drape shape, reet pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic's cell". The trousers sometimes, reputedly, had a special hidden pocket sewn in, the perfect size and shape to contain a billy club for use as a weapon in street violence.

Zoot suits first gained popularity in Harlem jazz culture in the late 1930s. The word "zoot" probably comes from the French word zut (meaning "damn!"). They were extremely popular with African-American youth and also with young Latinos, most particularly in the Los Angeles Chicano community. In March of 1942, the War Production Board banned zoot suit production, because it deemed the style wasteful of valuable suiting material during wartime. But the fashion persisted, despite restrictions placed on the amount of fabric in the production of garments.

It has been suggested by some that zoot suits originated as a passive protest to measures during World War II to limit nationwide consumption of many items due to war needs, but this is unlikely, as they were fashionable in black and Latino communities long before the imposition of such restrictions.

The young men who wore these suits were accompanied by girls dressed all in black. They were called the black widows.

See also