Neo swing style

[Matt Deckard]

It's not Quite golden era, more of what came about when the renaissance of Swing hit in the 90's... Zoot suits and bowling shirts were back in vogue, I went from 80's style to vintage style overnight and never really got into the neo look... what bout you?

What do you think of the 90's to zoot suiters?

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I never liked the style. It was a modified '90s version of '70s-'80s "Stray Cats" rockabilly / "Chevalier Bros." jump jive, which itself was a modified version of, well, the original stuff.

So many filters! Something got washed out along the way.


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[resortes805]

I remember wondering why so many white guys were wearing zoot suits.

 

[ortega76]

Everything is derivative. Tommy Hilfiger from Brooks Brothers from English Saville Row.

I liked some of the 90's Zoot-style updates, and you still see the look in the Black community (a la Stacy Adams. It added a little flair to the boring, monotonous menswear styles we've had for awhile. More importantly, I loved seeing men and women lose the grungy tees and dress up a bit. Ok, the guys donned red zootsuits and black shirts but it was a start!

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Everything is derivative. Tommy Hilfiger from Brooks Brothers from English Saville Row.

I gotta call you on that one. Brooks Brothers is definitely not -- and never has been -- like Savile Row. Savile Row tailoring is, and always has been, much more fitted than Brooks Bros. ever was. The reason is that Savile Row began life as a street for military officers' tailors. Officers' dress uniforms were (and still are) very fitted -- never loose or baggy.

In contrast, Brooks Brothers began life as a store offering ready-to-wear clothes to merchant seamen and onshore sailors. Because the clothing was ready-made, it leaned more toward the "one size fits all" school of tailoring: loose and baggy. Up until the 1990s, Brooks Brothers steadfastly perpetuated the loose look of the 3-button "sack" suit and the amply proportioned buttondown shirt.


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[Benny Holiday]

I remember wondering why so many white guys were wearing zoot suits.

Or should that be amended to 'why so many white guys were wearing zoot suits badly'?

We didn't really have a 'neo-swing' revival here. What we do have now is a bunch of ballroom dancers who wear costume versions of 40's clothes and who congregate in 'dance schools'. As they can't dance to any tempo above 40 beats per minute, they tend to stick to themselves and listen to slowed-down CD's (I'm not kidding!), but every so often they'll turn up to a good Swing gig and ruin the music by demanding that the band slow down so they can show off their latest 'moves' and be the centre of attention. Thus, they suck the energy and feel out of the music like some sort of ridiculously-attired vampires.

Here in the 40's, the zoot suit was worn by 'bodgies', hepcats who were the precursors to the leather-jacketed greasers of the 50's. They were cool, and they were tough. It doesn't bode well for a ballroom nerd if I see them wearing a poor imitation of a zoot - (poly-cotton drape suit, anyone? They never get it right).

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Is it something like the movie STRICTLY BALLROOM?

 

[Benny Holiday]

Sort of

It's a very cartoonish parody of 40's style. What irks me most about these people is how rude they are, that they literally demand to be the show and take over a venue - there are lots of them. They dance very stiff and formal, not like real jive or jitterbug, but they really love showing off.

One time a few years ago, a couple of them got married on a TV show called, naturally enough, 'Weddings.' They were wearing matching sequinned outfits (think Elvis' gold lame tuxedo), and the very next day a woman at work asked me, "Did you see 'Weddings' last night? Is that the sort of thing you're into?"

Aaaaarrrgggghhhhh!

 

[ortega76]

I gotta call you on that one. Brooks Brothers is definitely not -- and never has been -- like Savile Row. Savile Row tailoring is, and always has been, much more fitted than Brooks Bros. ever was. The reason is that Savile Row began life as a street for military officers' tailors. Officers' dress uniforms were (and still are) very fitted -- never loose or baggy.

In contrast, Brooks Brothers began life as a store offering ready-to-wear clothes to merchant seamen and onshore sailors. Because the clothing was ready-made, it leaned more toward the "one size fits all" school of tailoring: loose and baggy. Up until the 1990s, Brooks Brothers steadfastly perpetuated the loose look of the 3-button "sack" suit and the amply proportioned buttondown shirt.


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True, I was thinking more of the fabric choices. The striped repp ties from military service reversed and turned into the the default business tie, for example. The same color pallettes are present. I agree Saville Row's style is very different. Perhaps "influenced" was a better choice of words.

 

[Dr. Shocker]

I remember wondering why so many white guys were wearing zoot suits.

well because that was a style they associated with the dance......ala cartoons of the wolf and others.......but there were white guys who wore them back in the day but they tended to live in or whished they lived in the bario and hood.......myself I ahve always dug en just can't find a decent one in a color i would be caught dead in

 

[ortega76]

myself I ahve always dug en just can't find a decent one in a color i would be caught dead in

What, you don't think you can pull off a purple plaid zoot suit?

 

[Marc Chevalier]

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True, I was thinking more of the fabric choices. The striped repp ties from military service reversed and turned into the the default business tie, for example.

True. And after all, Brooks Brothers' w.a.s.p. customers could never claim to not be anglophiles.

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[The Wingnut]

The '90s swing revival brought both good and bad...it woke many people up to the era it invoked, but it also brought yet another level of sterotyping to those of us who like to dress well and know what a reall suit looks like.

I grind my teeth when the inevitable 'Is that a zoot suit?' falls out of some knucklehead's mouth. Geez. Anything double-breasted or pinstriped immediately gets called a zoot suit.

I suppose people just go for the obvious, the extreme, the most noticable or memorable. The subtleties of an era are lost to most. My biggest gripe about the swing revival sound was nobody was using clarinets...that was the backbone of the golden era's 'mellow' tone. Most neo-swing bands couldn't get it right, and used saxes or even trumpets in lieu of a clarinet, and came off cheesy and brassy, sometimes tinny.

Flipside, we got bands like Big Time Operator, Mora's Modern Rythmists, the Bill Elliot Swing Orchestra, Giorgio Brutini ties and spectators, and some people got genuinely interested in the real stuff once they started digging, and know better. I was one of them.

 

[wackyvorlon]

I'm sorry, Ladies and Gentlemen - there has been, in human history, but one man who could pull off a zoot suit and look truly good in it.

That was Cab Calloway.

As for neo swing bands, I have been generally disappointed by them as well. Rarely do they actually sound like the old stuff. In all fairness, however, I don't beleive I see any that really have genius behind them. Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway - these are names that, some day, will be in the same league as Mozart and Beethoven.

 

[ortega76]

For me, the zoot suit never really went away. I never cared for the look, but my cousins wore them to proms and quinceaneras. These were the modern zoots. More about style and flash than accuracy. I've always had a more understated style, myself.

I have a great photo of my grandfather in a zootsuit with my grandmother next to him.

 

[flat-top]

By far, the best CD released during the Neo Swing era:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...1/104-9149083-1090323?s=music&v=glance&n=5174

 

[ArrowCollarMan]

The 90's were just very strange.

 

[resortes805]

For me, the zoot suit never really went away. I never cared for the look, but my cousins wore them to proms and quinceaneras.

Yeah, this was kinda what I was getting at. Of course white guys wore zoot suits back in the 1940's, since it was more of a overall blue collar thing than a just a Black/Brown thing. But from from the post war years to the mid nineties, the only people you saw wearing zoot suits were people of color that understood the cultural significance of 'em. There's nothing with white dudes in zoot suits, as long as they know a little bit about the history.

In retrospect, I really did enjoy the late 90's no matter what criticisms we may have about that 'era' nowadays.

 

[Salv]

... But from from the post war years to the mid nineties, the only people you saw wearing zoot suits were people of color that understood the cultural significance of 'em.

There was a zoot suit revival in England in the early 80s. Club promoter Chris Sullivan started selling new zoots and his band, Blue Rondo a la Turk, all wore them. I had a light grey Prince of Wales zoot that I bought in London in about 1982. I don't have any pictures of that suit, but here are some of Sullivan and his friends, circa 1981:

Slightly Off Topic - While looking for those photos of Chris Sullivan I found some photos taken in Londons Kensington Market in 1981. For the retro and vintage fan in London in the early 80s the Market was one of the prime sources for clothes and music. There were many vintage stalls, all packed with 40s and 50s American clothes. Also there was Rock-A-Cha who made fantastic reproductions of 40s and 50s styles, and from whom I bought my Prince of Wales zoot. Here are a couple of photos in Rock-A-Cha from 25 years ago:

The guy on the left in the second photo is Rob Crossley who still runs Rocacha (as it's now known) today. The other guy is legendary club DJ Jay Strongman.

 

[silhouette53]

What, you don't think you can pull off a purple plaid zoot suit?

fftopic: I just had a wierd vision of Tony Blair and George Bush walking along a deserted beach together each wearing this suit !! In different colours of course - wouldn't want them to look like twins !! Now..... who gets the purple one ??lol lol lol