This printed rayon scarf formed part of a ‘zoot suit’ outfit recreated for the exhibition Streetstyle, From Sidewalk to Catwalk, 1940 to Tomorrow held at the V&A in 1994-5. The complete outfit consisted of a black and white chalk-striped wool two-piece suit, the scarf and an original 1940s hat (loaned). Recreated by Cherry Parker in 1994, the suit was based on a two-piece worn by performer Lena Horne in a dance routine in the 1943 film ‘Stormy Weather’. Helen Rose’s costume designs for this film are among the few surviving sources showing female ‘zoot suits’.

‘Zoot’ meant something worn or performed in an extravagant style and the term came to be applied to suits with outrageously padded shoulders and trousers sharply tapered at the ankles worn by young black and Hispanic men in 1940s America. At a time when black Americans were expected to assume a subservient attitude to whites, the ostentatious zoot suit was a direct challenge to the social order. Its extravagant use of fabric also made wearers unpopular in wartime America.