”The gang at our end of the Neighborhood was called the Tigers, most of
them Irish. Their great rivals were the South Brooklyn Boys, most of
them Italian. They all wore variations on the zoot suit, brightly
colored trousers with a three-or-four-inch rise above the belt,
ballooning knees, tight thirteen-inch pegged ankles. The rear pockets
were covered with gun-shaped flaps of a different color, called pistol
pockets; sometimes a bright saddle stitch would run down the seam of
the trouser leg. If the trousers were a bright green, the pistol
pockets, narrow belt, and saddle stitches might all be yellow. Or the
combination would be maroon and gray. Or black and tan. Or purple and
pale blue. The colors and combinations were drastic, radical, personal,
at once an affirmation of their owner’s uniqueness and a calculated
affront to those locked in the gray dark memory of the Depression, the
khaki and navy blue palette of the war, or suit-and-tie respectability.”

—Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life: A Memoir, 1994..