Fashion for Blood
Super-sized shoulder pads, sprawling lapels, and peg leg pants - zoot suits were the pinnacle of fashion for the minority communities in the U.S.A. These suits weren’t taken lightly - a young adult would wear their zoot suit the one day a week that they felt free and go dancing with their friends. On a broader scale, zoot suits were seen as obnoxious, gang-related clothing, but for the American minorities, it was their obnoxious clothing and within their rights to wear it. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States joined World War II. With this, rationing began and regulated the production of civilian clothing containing silk, wool, and other essential fabrics. In 1942, zoot suits were made illegal, but zoot suiters saw a truth behind this law - a ploy to diminish the spirit and control the minority communities. When the population of white sailors and servicemen around the area grew, the risk and the reaction to get attention was higher than ever. Eventually, zoot suiters were being brutally assaulted and left half-naked on the street, then arrested as if they weren’t the victims. To this day, zoot suits are still seen as unpatriotic and illegal in the state of California. This project is building to serve a greater purpose, to create awareness and contribution to the history of the people and of the product of the minority communities that fought their way to the light. For each portion of the project, we wielded our passion into each individual subject with an intense fury.
HistoryWith the law of zoot suits being banned still to this day, we want to create an opening statement that could be uttered by a lawyer in the case of abolishing the ban on zoot suits in California. We undertook research of the zoot suits - the people, the place and the times. Also, we looked at the first amendment - how it was the first of its kind, its meaning and it use in today's time. With all of this, we took the context of the zoot suit riots - specifically, the civil unrest and racism of the 1940s - and combined it with how the first amendment can be used in a court of law today. Together, we had written this opening statement below with the passion of those wearing the zoot suits (our clients) and the facts that weren't made public or widely known during the aftermath of the zoot suit riots.
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EnglishFor English, we delved more into the context of the people of the time and the longstanding effects of the zoot suit riot. With too many people permanently scarred and traumatized from the zoot suit riots, we wanted to pull together the scraps we had from the first perspective accounts in order to create a story. We, collectively, brought our own ideas of what we had felt we needed people to know: We combined the pain of those still carrying the memories of the zoot suit riots, the lingering laws of the zoot suit riots, and the mirror of racial injustice that still occurs today. In the story below, we slip on our own suits of bravery like our ancestors had, and unleash our passion into the main character, Julio, who unveils the history he wasn't told in school - the history that he wasn't meant to know.
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Art
For this portion of our project it is really cut and dry for us - we decided to create a zoot suit of our own. We decided to go the way that most zoot suits were constructed - we borrowed an old suit and put it on Adrianna which was able to provide the oversized and baggy look. With that, we paired the purple suit with the classic white button down and a black tie. Though it may seem plain, we wanted the vibrancy of the mundane purple color to be accentuated like it would be in the 1940s. With our final accessories, we added a gold chain that hung loosely around the leg and suspenders that would keep up the loose pants as you were swing dancing the night away. By combining these aspects, we were able to conjure up a project that honored both of our histories and other's. By involving the context of the past, we were able to understand the style and appeal of the zoot suits, but also how they attracted attention - how great of a statement they made.
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