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A West Virginia Town Applied For Soviet Foreign Aid, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan February 21, 2020 33 min

Vulcan - McDowell County — Vulcan miners in 1919. The Sangha Kommune

15. Luxury and Wartime

Teenagers wearing Zoots in 1942. Aventuras na Historia

Because many materials and significant tailoring effort went into making them, Zoot suits were luxury items. When America joined WWII, the US War Production Board criticized the outfits for wasting materials and production time better used in the war effort. The outfits were seen by their young wearers as declarations of their individuality, freedom, or even rebelliousness. They were seen by others as self-indulgent and unpatriotic extravagances during wartime.

Life magazine did a feature on youths sporting Zoots in 1942, and concluded that “they were solid arguments for lowering the Army draft age to include 18-year-olds“. The rest of the media joined in with sensational accounts, often wildly exaggerating the suits’ costs and price tags. That kicked off a backlash against Zoot suits. Those clad in the outfits were often berated and verbally assailed in public, and sometimes physically attacked. Cops sometimes stopped and hassled Zoot wearers, ruining their suits by slashing them.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.