Introduction to Chicano Fashion
What Is Chicano Fashion?
The Chicano Movement gave rise to the ethnic identity of Mexican Americans, known as Chicano (feminine form) or Chicano fashion (masculine form). In the 1940s, young people part of the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture reclaimed the term “Chicano,” previously used as a racist and classist slur against low-income Mexicans.
The term “Chicano” is not associated with the identity of Mexican Americans. As a means of resistance and empowerment, young people in barrios embraced their identity and vision and refused cultural assimilation into mainstream American culture. Sometimes, by collaborating with the Black Power movement, the community developed its own political and cultural movement.
A Chicano fashion community in El Paso’s Second Ward (1972)
Due to internal and external forces, the Chicano fashion Movement began to collapse by the middle of the 1970s. U.S. government agencies, informants, and agent provocateurs, including the FBI’s COINTELPRO, were monitoring, infiltrating, and suppressing it.
Additionally, the Chicano fashion Movement’s obsession with macho and masculine pride caused misogyny toward Chicanas and homophobia toward LGBT Chicano/as, further dividing the group.
Key Eras of Chicano Fashion Evolution
The 1980s Assimilation and the Hispanic Identity:
In the 1980s, Chicano fashion rose amid conservatism, Hispanic assimilation, and economic advancement. Consultation between the U.S. government and the Hispanic Caucus coined the term “Hispanic” to distinguish it from the Black Caucus, move away from Chicanismo, and align with mainstream American culture.
The 2000s–2010s: Revival and Transcultural Awareness:
The Chicano fashion Movement extended its anti-imperialist traditions in the 2000s. Despite concerns over legal status and economic competitiveness occasionally keeping groups apart, it became more crucial to develop solidarity with unauthorized immigrants. As a result of thinking outside and connecting with communities across political boundaries, Chicano fashion awareness become more transnational and transcultural.
The 1950s Pachuco and Pachuca Subculture:
By the 1950s, Pocho referred (often negatively) to people who fervently supported assimilation, whereas Chicano referred to people who opposed complete absorption. José Cuéllar’s essay “Chicanismo” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures (2002) highlighted the transformation of the term in the late 1950s when politically aware Mexican-American high school students began using it positively, similar to how African Americans reclaimed the term “Black” for political and ethnic pride.
The 1960s–1970s The Chicano Movement:
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Chicano fashion Movement was instrumental in reclaiming the name “Chicano,” opposing those who used it as a derogatory epithet on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. conflict. Initially, there were demographic disparities in Chicano adoption. Males were more likely than females to use it, while people from better socioeconomic backgrounds were less likely to use it. Additionally, the word’s usage varied by generation, with third-generation men using it more frequently. In addition to being younger and more politically engaged, this group deviated from conventional Mexican culture.
The Impact of Government Suppression on the Movement
Chicano and Chicana identities started to be seen as positive symbols of political solidarity and self-determination among Mexican Americans. Chicano may still be connected to a Mexican in Mexico. To affirm a unique ethnic, political, and cultural identity that defied colonialism, institutionalized racism and stereotypes, assimilation into mainstream American culture, and the American nation-state, Chicago was widely recovered during the Chicano fashion Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In an attempt to overcome regional and class divides, Chicano identity developed around seven themes: unity, economy, education, institutions, self-defence, culture, and political freedom. In the 1970s, Chicano fashion upheld their initial platform’s principles while cultivating a respect for machismo. For example, the origin of Chicano identity is machismo, according to Oscar Zeta Acosta, who asserts that this “instinctual and mystical root of manhood, honour, and pride… alone justifies any behaviour.”
Machismo is “in fact an underlying force of the gathering identity of Mexican Americans… the essence of machismo, of being macho, is as much a symbolic basis for the Chicano fashion uprising as it is a guideline for family life,” according to Armando Rendón’s Chicano Manifesto (1971). From the start of the Chicano Movement, some Chicanas questioned whether machismo was “indeed a genuinely Mexican cultural value or a kind of distorted view of masculinity generated by the psychological need to compensate for the indignities suffered by Chicano fashion in a white supremacist society.” They also criticized the notion that machismo must lead the people. The majority of the literature on the Chicano Movement, according to Angie Chabram-Dernersesian, concentrated on men and boys, with virtually none addressing Chicanas.
The 1990s Assimilation and the Hispanic Identity:
By the 1990s, there was a change as a result of the Chicano Movement’s machismo and exclusion of Chicanas. The earliest forms of Chicano fashion cultural identity emerged in the Southwestern United States and Los Angeles, California, as early as the 1930s. “We had to protect ourselves” is how former zoot suiter Salvador “El Chava” describes how poverty and prejudice created a difficult social climate for Chicanos, which in turn contributed to the growth of gangs. In southern California and other places, barrios and colonias (rural barrios) arose in underdeveloped city neighbourhoods and undeveloped rural areas.
West Coast fashion has long incorporated Chicano fashion elements; this style has influenced popular culture and made its way to runways and apparel stores worldwide.
Chicano Fashion in Modern Culture
The Chicano fashion feminist intervention of Xicanisma served as the foundation for the emergence of Xicanx identity in the 2010s. There is some disagreement among historians regarding the term Chicano’s derivation. People think that the Spanish word “Chicano” derives from the Nahuatl word “Mexitli” (pronounced “Meh-shee-flee”). The term Mexica describes the Mexica people. The glottal stop in the centre of the Nahuatl word vanished, but the x in Mexihcatl symbolizes a /ʃ/ or sh sound in both Nahuatl and early modern Spanish. Deleting the first syllable of Mexicano (Mexican) may be the origin of the word Chicano fashion.
The Significance of Chicano Fashion Today:
To recover the Nahuatl sh sound, some Chicanos use the letter X, or Xicano, for the letter Ch. As a result, Xicano’s final syllable is Castilian, while its initial two are in Nahuatl. Pachuco youth reclaimed the term “Chicano” in the 1940s as a protest against Anglo-American culture. At the time, working-class Mexican Americans in Spanish-speaking communities were referred to as Chicano fashion, a racist and classist epithet used by English and Spanish speakers.
Conclusion Chicano Fashion as a Living Legacy:
From up-and-coming labels to luxury fashion houses, many industry participants have largely benefited from the subculture that was first born out of the social oppression Latino communities have endured since the Mexican Repatriation of 1929—a tragic event in which the U.S. government deported about 2 million people of Mexican heritage. Workwear staples such as crisp button-down shirts and baggy Dickies have always been associated with the cholo appearance. Chavarria tells Hypebeast that the Chicano male’s neat, tidy-looking uniform mastered the transformation of simple labour clothes into a sophisticated representation of racial identity.
