How 1940s Zazous Rebelled through Fashion
How fashion has been used as a tool for political resistance...
I recently came across a fascinating photo while reading 100 Years of Fashion by Cally Blackman. The image introduced me to Swing or Zazou fashion, a style I hadn't encountered before. The history is incredible and I’d love to share it here.
Who were the Zazous?
Emerging in the late 1930s, the Zazous were an informal group of over 100 young people, mostly aged 17-20, mostly in Paris, France. They rebelled against the Nazi occupation and the ultra-conservative Vichy regime primarily through fashion and jazz.
In the midst of oppressive leadership, Zazous gathered in cellars and attics to dance, frequenting Nazi-patrolled communities and two main cafés: Pam Pam Café on the Champs-Élysées and the Boul’Mich (Boulevard Saint-Michel near the Sorbonne). There, they drank fruit juice or beer with grenadine syrup and openly expressed their love for jazz—music that the Nazis had outlawed as a "mechanism of cultural degeneration." The Zazous likely got their name from Zah Zuh Zah, a song by Black jazz musician Cab Calloway. They danced distinctively, with a bouncy style and wiggling fingers.
Fashion as Resistance
When the Vichy regime imposed fabric rationing for the war effort, the Zazous responded by wearing oversized, brightly colored garments—intentionally extravagant and “wasteful.” When barbershops were ordered to send all cut hair to the government, the Zazous grew their hair high and long.
Their style was deliberately provocative. They favored oversized sunglasses, garish shoulder pads, thick-soled platform shoes, and patterns like tartan (a British import). Some carried umbrellas and used English slang as a nod to British culture. Men wore big pockets, jackets extending to their knees, thin ties, short pants, and boldly printed jackets in a “dandy” style that rejected Nazi ideals of masculinity. Women wore tight sweaters, short skirts, heavy makeup, and dyed their hair blonde—leaving dark roots visible as a stark contrast to the conservative maternal ideals promoted by the regime. In an act of pointed defiance, some even created their own yellow stars with the word "Zazou" written on them.
Why Were the Zazous Considered a Threat?
Despite their lack of formal organization or direct political action, the Zazous unsettled the Vichy regime. The regime placed immense value on youth as the future of their nationalist vision, implementing morality laws and establishing youth work camps in 1940 to re-educate and indoctrinate young people. The Zazous’ flamboyant clothing, love of jazz, and public socialization stood in direct opposition to these ideals. Their actions were deemed unpatriotic, frivolous, and even dangerous. Though they posed no real political threat, they became convenient scapegoats.
By 1942, the Vichy government recognized the urgency of eliminating “unpatriotic” youth culture. In May of that year, the Jeunesses Populaires Françaises (JPF) was founded with the mission “To create a revolutionary youth movement with enough power to attract all the living youth of this country, to regenerate all of French youth, and also to have an influence on politics and on the destiny of our fatherland.”
On June 14, 1942, JPF members raided Parisian streets and cafés, targeting Zazous. Their slogan became "Scalp the Zazous!" as they attacked Zazous with hair clippers. French newspapers applauded these attacks, and by the end of the year, many Zazous had gone underground. They were beaten in the streets, had their heads forcibly shaved, were arrested, and some were even sent to worksites in the countryside.
Fashion as Political Resistance
The Zazous were not alone in using fashion as a form of rebellion. Throughout history, marginalized groups have used clothing to assert their identities and challenge oppressive norms: In Nazi Germany, the Swing Kids adopted jazz culture and flamboyant clothing to oppose fascist ideals. In the U.S., the Zoot Suit movement saw young Mexican American men wear oversized suits as a form of cultural defiance, leading to violent crackdowns. The Black Panther Party rejected the "Sunday Best" aesthetic and instead wore leather jackets, berets, and natural hairstyles as a visual statement of resistance.
As Andrew Bolton, curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, notes:
"Fashion functions as a mirror to our times, so it is inherently political."
Sources:
Seward, Kate. “En remontant le Boul’ Mich’: The Zazous as Scapegoats in Collaborationist France.” Equinoxes, no. 9, 2007. Retrieved from https://www.brown.edu/Research/Equinoxes/journal/Issue%209/eqx9_seward.html#:~:text=3%20The%20origin%20of%20the,hit%20“Je%20Suis%20Swing”.
Libcom. (n.d.). The Zazous (1940–1945). Retrieved from https://libcom.org/article/zazous-1940-1945.
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Zazou. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zazou.
Fox, S. (2016, June 7). The Zazous: The French subculture that defied the Nazis. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/timeline/zazou-france-world-war-ii-9f26b36e0ee3.
WOW! I love this. I had no idea this was a thing in Vichy France. Thanks for bringing it to light. Someone needs to write a novel about it...
Thank you for writing this especially in our current political and cultural climate where fashion is being painted as an apolitical enterprise. In the end, it's a form of censorship to insist that "that's just not what fashion does" when in fact, it IS political and ALWAYS HAS BEEN.