#ChicanoHistory: Ever wonder where the Cholo look came from?? If you look in any old school year books of the 1940s and 1950s you will see that young men wore a lot of khakis and button down shirts. This was a classic American fashion style. The reason the Mexican-American culture adopted this look to an extreme all started just after World War II when the Commissaries had mass amounts of inventory that had been made exclusively for the soldiers. Since the war was over there was no need to keep supplying the soldiers with the clothing that consisted of button down shirts, t-shirts, under shirts ( later referred to as “wife-beaters”) and tan khakis or chinos. The Commissary needed to move this extra inventory so they sold it “dirt cheap” to civilians. The majority of buyers were young Mexican-American boys and men who couldn’t afford the more expensive clothing, but instead were able to purchase large amounts of clothing from the Commissary for pennies on the dollar. With all this supply of khakis (chinos) and t-shirts being sold in huge amounts, the Mexican-American community was overwhelmed with young men in the neighborhood dressing alike. They adopted the American standard military style of ironing the crease in their pants to remain a classic and sharp look. So as you see, this style was also adopted from another American fashion trend. As time went on other trends were adopted into that fashion such as the hairnets, bandanas, the wearing of Jerseys and later implementing Denim Jeans and tennis shoes such as Nike Cortez, Shell-toe Adidas among other styles to their look. Learn more about this and their predecessor, the Pachuco here:
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 22:00:00 +0000
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