Zoot suits and lowriders — OC Fair to celebrate Chicano culture this weekend

In 1978, Phyllis Estrella went on the hunt for a zoot suit after watching Luis Valdez’s seminal musical of the same name. She wanted to gift the outfit to her younger brother, but an exhaustive search across the Los Angeles area yielded nothing.

So Estrella opened up a tailor shop and decided to make the suits herself, daughter-in-law Vanesa Estrella said.

For nearly half a century, the Fullerton-based El Pachuco Zoot Suits has been fashioning custom zoot suits for quinceañeras, proms, weddings and museum exhibits across the country. One ensemble even made its way to the Smithsonian.

Other pieces have appeared in movie and TV productions, including the 2020 Showtime series “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels,” for which Estrella said the shop supplied more than 100 suits.

More creations from the Estrella family will be on display at the OC Fair on Sunday, Aug. 9, in two fashion shows that the store is presenting on the Plaza Pacific Stage as part of a Chicano heritage celebration.

Unlike in the past two years, however, the oversized shoulder pads and high-waisted trousers made iconic by a generation of Mexican American youths —the pachucos and pachucas — will not be the only stars of the show.

The zoot suit models, for the first time, will be sharing a stage with a dozen classic lowriders, Vanesa Estrella said.

“Faigoers will be able to walk onto the stage and take photos with pachucos and pachucas,” she said, adding that the program will combine fashion with dancing, live music and storytelling. “We’ll wrap up with a little parade, as cars and models cruise out together.”‘

Estrella, who took over the shop with her husband a few years ago, said the zoot suit has always been more than just a piece of clothing.

“It’s a symbol of identity, resilience and cultural pride,” she said.

Originating in Harlem jazz halls in the 1930s, the zoot suit gained popularity among young Black and Puerto Rican men before quickly spreading to Mexican American working-class enclaves in L.A. Together with the lowriding cars, the suit became a symbol of the Chicano counterculture over the next decade.

It would also spark one of the most shameful episodes of racial violence in L.A. history, which inspired Valdez’s “Zoot Suit” musical.

In June of 1943, White servicemen and mobs brutally beat pachucos and burned their zoot suits, calling the look “unpatriotic.” Many Black and Filipino youths were targeted in the attacks, too. The Zoot Suit Riots marked “perhaps the first time in American history that fashion was believed to be the cause of widespread civil unrest,” historian Kathy Peiss wrote in “Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style.”

Through the fashion show, Estrella said she wants to teach the history and traditions behind zoot suits and address misconceptions. The treatment of the pachucos in the 1940s bears harrowing similarities to the current political moment, she said.

“At the time, people were attacked because they were wearing a style of clothing,” Estrella said. “In 2026, we have the Supreme Court saying it’s OK to racially profile someone based on language they speak, the color of their skin. What’s more unpatriotic than racism?”

For Sunday’s fashion show, the chosen models are long-time customers at El Pachuco who’ll be strutting down the runway in their own custom suits.

“It’s important to us that our show reflects the community as a whole,” Estrella said.

Over the last decade and a half, she said, social media has taken the family business to new heights, introducing a new generation of zoot suit enthusiasts to the shop and enabling her to finally ship internationally.

“It’s amazing to watch a style of clothing that once carried a stigma now literally be celebrated,” Estrella said. “A style that once lived mostly in the lowrider world has grown into something much bigger.”

If you go

• When: The celebration is 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 9
• The “Zoot Suit Fashion Show & Lowrider Exhibit” starts at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
• Where: At the Plaza Pacifica Stage at the OC Fair, 88 Fair Drive
• Cost: Free with admission to the fair
• Information: ocfair.com