Thursday, Jan 14, 2021

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One of the most striking aspects of this series of images is the gang’s aesthetic. Despite being taken in the early 80s, the pictures have a look of another era. Like most subcultures, HM’s unity, cohesiveness, and identity is expressed through the way they dress. “I think the Hoyo Maravilla style may reference the time of the zoot suit wars in 1943,” Beckman suggests. These infamous riots erupted in Southern California when this oversized style of tailoring became unjustly and irrationally associated with grandiosity and unpatriotism, due to the fact it required what was deemed an excessive amount of fabric during an era of wartime rationing. Most of the violence was directed against the Mexican American youth who'd adopted this fashion. As a visual signifier, the zoot suit was thereby bequeathed additional meanings of defiance and resistance.....wrtten by Emily Dinsdale