Fashion Fights: The Straw Hat and Zoot Suit Riots

14. The Shift From a Literal Fashion Police to Policing Fashion Via Public Opinion

Eventually, governments ceased to police fashion, and left that to public opinion. Public opinion being what it is, fashion rules were sometimes enforced by violent mobs, like the time when riots erupted in American cities over the choice of hats. Straw hats for men became popular in the nineteenth century. Light and permeable, they were typically worn in summer, often at sports outings. Most popular was the straw boater, originally worn at boating events. At first, the era’s fashion police gave straw hats the side eye and frowned upon their use. However, they gradually won acceptance, and by the late nineteenth century, straw hats were standard summertime male headgear. However, the acceptance came with a caveat. An unwritten rule developed, that straw hats were strictly summertime wear. September 1^st became an arbitrary end date for straw hat season, and woe betide those who broke that fashion rule.

13. The Transformation of Fashion Policing Headgear from Heavy Handed Fun to Widespread Criminality

Nowadays, fashion rules are so slack that sweatpants and hoodies are sometimes acceptable boardroom attire. Not so in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when fashion – especially headgear fashion – was serious business. The end of straw hat season was eventually extended to September 15^th, which came to be known as “Felt Hat Day”. A tradition emerged that those who wore straw hats past the cutoff date were liable to have them snatched off their domes and destroyed by friends and acquaintances. It was all in good fun at first. Then it morphed into widespread crime, when strangers began to take the liberty of snatching straw hats off the heads of people with whom they were unacquainted. The results were violence, and eventually, widespread rioting. The rule that men should not wear straw hats after September 15^th was enforced, sometimes violently, by the fashion police – or more accurately, the fashion mob.

12. Pittsburgh’s Violent “Felt Hat Day”

Straw hats worn by men after September 15^th were fair game for anybody who wanted to snatch them off their heads and stomp them to smithereens. Many went along, good naturedly. Some, though, saw having their private property seized and destroyed by strangers as what it actually was: a crime. However, resistance only emboldened the straw hat fashion police to gather in mobs for mutual protection – or mutual bullying – and get more violent. Pittsburgh was home to one of the earliest recorded instances of widespread crime, violence, and rioting surrounding the end of straw hat season. On September 15^th, 1910, Felt Hat Day demonstrations were organized. Mobs descended upon straw-lidded pedestrians to snatch away and destroy their headgear. Some men stood up for their right to wear whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, and resisted the wrecking of their straw hats. They were attacked and violently wrecked by the demonstrators.

11. Policing Fashion With Firearms

As crime and violence spread, some straw hat wearers in Pittsburgh pulled guns to protect their headgear. Elsewhere in the city, some had their hats taken off their heads at gunpoint. Eventually, police were mobilized to disperse the rioters, and serious bloodshed and loss of life was narrowly avoided. The next day, many newspapers wrote it off as “youthful exuberance”. As the scale of September 15^th rioting grew in subsequent years, however, the public’s and the media’s patience with such exuberance grew thin. Violent youth gangs that roam city streets and assault hapless passersby have probably been around since cities first came into existence. However, it has probably been a long time since such youthful gang violence was driven by an intense dislike of the victims’ fashion choices.

10. The Spread of Straw Hat Riots from Pittsburgh to Other Cities

Once America’s youth got it into their heads that, come every September 15^th, they were entitled to yank straw hats off of people’s heads and destroy them, it became well-night impossible to put that genie back in the bottle. As many newspapers reporting on Pittsburgh’s 1910 straw hat disturbances noted, things were bound to get worse. They were right. In 1922, New York City erupted into a days-long Straw Hat Riot that Pittsburgh’s 1910 disturbances to shame. It began in Manhattan’s Mulberry Bend, when some urchins decided to ignore the September 15^th cutoff. Instead, they figured that they could get a head start on their annual crime spree, and began to snatch and destroy straw hats on September 13^th. The first targets of New York’s young ruffians were some dockworkers, who went about in straw hats. As seen below, it did not go as planned.

9. New York’s Dockworkers Refused to Go Along With the Straw Hat Fashion Rules

Unfortunately for New York’s young hoodlums, the dockworkers refused to go along, or see the humor in having some snot nosed kids tell them what they could wear and when they could wear it. They got ticked off, fought back, and beat up the brats. Things escalated, and that night, widespread mayhem and crime engulfed Manhattan. After they got whupped by the dockworkers, the kids regrouped in ever-larger and increasingly more violent gangs. Soon, mobs of out of control youth were snatching hats off heads, attacking people en masse, and beating up any who resisted. New York City’s 1922 Straw Hat Riot went on for days. The initial mayhem on the night of September 13^th grew so widespread and got so bad that it halted traffic on the Manhattan Bridge. Police reinforcements were rushed in to end the rioting, but as seen below, the relief was only temporary.

8. When New York’s Fashion Police Pounded Straw Hat Wearers to a Pulp

The next night, the crime spree intensified when youth gangs returned to roaming the streets of Manhattan. This time, they did not show up empty handed, but armed themselves with whatever was handy and capable of inflicting damage, from literal sticks and stones up to nail-studded clubs. Straw hat wearers who crossed their path were lucky to get away with just losing their hats. The unlucky ones lost their hats and got beaten to a pulp. Police were helpless, and the rioting went on for days, spreading from the East Side to the rest of Manhattan. The Upper West Side became particularly dangerous for the straw-lidded, as witnesses reported a mob of more than 1000, snatching straw hats on Amsterdam Avenue.

7. The Violent Straw Hat Fashion Rule Enforcement Finally Ended When Straw Hats Lost Popularity

Many were injured during the 1922 Straw Hat Riot, and many were arrested. However, since many culprits were underage, they did not stay in lockup for long, before they were released to their parents. In the East 104^th Street Precinct, the police lieutenant in charge insisted that the parents spank their kids then and there, as a condition for their release. The straw hat-smashing tradition continued in later years. While there was no recurrence of widespread rioting on the scale of 1922’s mayhem, the end of straw hat season continued to be attended by violence. In 1924, for example, one man was murdered for wearing a straw hat after September 15^th. The violent tradition finally came to an end when straw hats went out of fashion during the Great Depression.

6. Older Folk Have Criticized Kids’ Tastes and Fashion Since Forever

In an ever-changing world, there are some constants, such as death, taxes… and teenage fashions that tick off grownups. Whether neon spiked hair, garishly colored Mohawks, body piercings, Goth getups, or sagging pants, teenagers seldom have trouble annoying older generations – who had forgotten how annoying they had been in their teens. “Kids these days” is a complaint that has, literally, been around for ages. Indeed, few things are as predictable as grownups getting into a snit about the mannerisms, morals, and supposed softness of the young. Take this gem from the past: “Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt…” It appeared in a 1771 edition of Town and Country Magazine.

5. An Ageless Complaint

One can go back further, to the first century BC, when Horace complained that: “The beardless youth… does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money“. Or go back even further, to Aristotle in the fourth century BC, who wrote: “[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. … They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it“. Few snits against the young, however, led to widespread rioting like that which occurred in America during World War II. Known as the Zoot Suit Riots, they combined negative fashion feedback with a huge dollop of racism, and led to hundreds of assaults and acts of violence across the country in cities as far apart as Los Angeles and New York.

4. When Zoot Suits Were All the Rage

Zoot suits became fashionable and hip in American cities in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The outsized zoots had a distinctive look, with a long coat featuring wide lapels and broad shoulder pads, and high-waisted pegged trousers that were wide legged and tight cuffed. Pointy French style shoes, plus a watch chain dangling from the belt to the knees, then back to a side pocket, were de rigueur.  Finally, a pork pie hat or fedora, color coordinated and sometimes featuring a long feather, completed the ensemble. Zoots were first associated with African Americans in Harlem, then crossed over and became popularized by Jazz singers and entertainers. In addition to African Americans, Zoots became hugely popular among Italian Americans, Latinos, and Filipinos. While also worn by many whites, the zoot suit’s “ethnic” origins and aura did not sit well with many of the straitlaced and traditional, or just plain racist.

3. A Fashion Choice That Was Frowned Upon in World War II

Zoot suits were luxury items that required many materials and significant tailoring to make. When America joined WWII, the US War Production Board criticized zoots for wasting materials and production time better used in the war effort. The outfits were seen by their young wearers as declarations of 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.

2. A Non-Existent “Crime Wave” Triggered the Zoot Suit Riots

The most dramatic backlash against zoots occurred in Los Angeles in June, 1943, in what came to be known as the “Zoot Suit Riots”. In the preceding year, local newspapers had whipped up racial tensions by harping on a non-existent “crime wave”, allegedly caused by Mexican-American youths. Soon, the media was in an uproar, calling for action against “Zoot suiters”. LA’s cops responded with frequent roundups and arrests of hundreds of young Mexican-Americans, guilty of nothing more than wearing oversized outfits. Tensions were further exacerbated by the conviction for murder of nine young Mexican-Americans, after a controversial trial amidst a wave of anti-Mexican hysteria. The trial had been a travesty, and the convictions were overturned on appeal. However, in the trial’s immediate aftermath, anti-Mexican racism reached a peak. At the time, LA had become a major military hub, with hundreds of thousands of servicemen stationed there or passing through.

1.     A Race Riot in the Guise of Fashion Policing

To many white military personnel, the wearing of zoot suits was viewed as public disrespect of the sacrifices made by others to sustain the war effort. Mexican-Americans came to be seen as unpatriotic – even though they actually served in the military at higher rates than whites. As a group, Mexican-Americans also had one of the highest percentages of Medal of Honor recipients. Unfortunately, racism seldom cares about facts. Riots erupted in June, 1943, when mobs of white soldiers and sailors roamed Los Angeles, and beat up allegedly “unpatriotic” Mexican-Americans clad in zoot suits. While the rioters focused on Latino kids, young African Americans and Filipinos were also targeted. Copycat riots spread throughout California to San Diego and Oakland, then across the country to Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City. It was the first time in American history that fashion caused literal rioting and widespread civil unrest.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

BBC – People Have Always Whinged About Young Adults. Here’s Proof

History Collection – Deadliest Fashion From History

Los Angeles Times, June 4^th, 2018 – Zoot Suit Riots: After 75 Years, LA Looks Back on a Violent Summer

Mexican Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer, 2000 – The Los Angeles ‘Zoot Suit Riots’ Revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives

New York Times, September 16^th, 1922 – City Has Wild Night of Straw Hat Riots

New York Tribune, September 16^th, 1922 – Straw Hat Smashing Orgy Bares Heads From Battery to Bronx

Pagan, Eduardo Obregon – Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime LA (2004)

Pittsburgh Press, September 16^th, 1910 – Straw Hat Riot

Ribeiro, Aileen – Dress and Morality (1986)

Slate – The 1922 Straw Hat Riot Was One of the Weirdest Crime Sprees in American History

Social Science History, Volume 24, Number 1, Spring 2000 – Los Angeles Geopolitics and the Zoot Suit Riot, 1943