Marc Fennell
speaker
2,016 appearances
19 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard yesterday
Marc Fennell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 19 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 6.
Appearances
So young people of color, they're wearing this oversized, fashionable suit, but not everyone's wearing it for the same reason.
But to gain this affinity and to look good at these jazz clubs, it had cost you.
Like, these suits were not cheap, just for the fabric alone.
Going back to our friend Clyde Duncan, he worked as a busboy at the time and what he paid for his bespoke garment would be around $400, $500 in today's dollars.
But as time wore on, young people would find ways of dealing with this cost.
Nothing says rebellion like traveling around with your own sewing kit, right?
Now, this is all happening around the early 1940s.
World War II is heating up, and, of course, in 1941, America enters the war.
And then in 1942, because there's so many army uniforms that need to get made, the U.S.
starts rationing fabric.
And for working class men who weren't soldiers but were working in essential wartime jobs in military-related industries, they're actually making quite a lot of money.
But this becomes a problem, right?
Because since the fabric rationing, wearing a zoot suit...
It's a statement, not just a fashion statement.
People start to see it as anti-American, anti-war.
And in LA, this causes a lot of friction because the city has always been a cultural melting pot.
African-Americans, Asians, Latinos.
And the multiculturalism...
It sparks a sort of identity crisis, creating a pressure cooker environment all around this question of who really qualifies as a true American.
These tensions, they bubble away to later that same year, 1942.
Showing 1081–1100 of 2,016 · page 55 of 101
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