La Pachuca type is again, solely now it’s about independence and shallowness – The Mercury Information

Born of Mexican-American pride and defiance, La Pachuca is back with her pinstriped eyebrows, thick red lipstick, platform shoes and a couple of new things — affluence and self-esteem. Órale, warm up the Prius, ruca, and let’s go cruising!

“I get a lot of feedback from older people and it’s been positive,” says Maria Rizzo, whose new “Pachuca Cosmetics” have plugged into a retro-fashion trend — sans the political overtones — among young Americans. “I was looking for that edge, that feel for the underground.”

Setting up a makeup session in a San Jose hotel room recently, she went to work on Gaby Perez, a statuesque model with the high cheekbones and bronze skin so perfect for the bright and vibrant colors of Rizzo’s cosmetic palette.

Older Mexican-Americans will remember the pachuco era of the 1930s and ’40s with mixed emotions. Sporting baggy, extravagant zoot suits, young pachuco men and their flamboyant pachuca girlfriends rebelled against an Anglo society that they felt demanded they give up everything Mexican while quietly accepting dead-end jobs. The ethnic tension and prejudice erupted into rioting that boiled over in World War II-era Los Angeles and around the country.

Of course, pachuco subculture and history are even more complicated than that. A lot of people, including older Mexican-Americans, thought of the pachucos as lowlife gangsters and pachucas as their cheap girlfriends. Members of another defiant subculture, the cholos, were considered by many to be little more than the Untouchables of Mexican-American society.

Even the origin of pachuco is open to interpretation — thought to be slang for residents of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico. The pachucos even had their own dialect, Caló, that drew from Spanish Gypsy, Mexican Spanish, New Mexico Spanish and American English. “Ruca” means “my one and only girl,” and sometimes, “my old lady.” “Órale” is a greeting akin to “what’s up!”

Against the grain

In almost every way, from language to fashion to their lowrider cars, pachucos ran against the cultural grain. OK, we’ll assimilate, they said. But on our terms, not yours.

But Pachuca Cosmetics isn’t just creating a trend, it’s taking the retro-fashion movement in fresh directions. Joe Miller, a “rockabilly” fashion agent in San Francisco, says today’s stylish young Americans, having no alternative to lowbrow grunge, skater and hip-hop clothing, are reaching back for mid-20th-century styles. For young Mexican-Americans today, that would include the zoot suit pachuco era.

According to events promoter Dulce Fernandez, embracing the old-new looks and styles gives “the young crowd a sense of identity.” The vice president of the Souleros Ball Revue, a San Jose nonprofit that puts on charity dances featuring pachuco and rockabilly fashions while mixing in soul music from the 1960s, notes that the original pachucos danced to swing, boogie and other sounds from the Big Band era.

A generation after the pachuco heyday, Bay Area playwright Luis Valdez put the struggles and trade-offs of assimilation onstage and on film with the groundbreaking “Zoot Suit,” which garnered a Best Picture Golden Globe nomination. Now, another generation is giving the pachuco style a third wind, this time with a feminine twist and marketing plans but little if any of the cultural pyrotechnics.

“I’m looking at it from the style perspective,” says Rizzo, who is 37, lives in San Jose and works full time in marketing for a major Bay Area university. “A lot of style starts on the streets and that’s where this is coming from.”

She doesn’t mean L.A. streets 70 years ago. On a visit to San Diego only six years ago, Rizzo was stunned to see scores of young Latinas cruising in lowrider cars and dolled up pachuca style — highly coifed hair adorned with red roses, “Sharpie pen” eyebrows and vintage dresses.

“Hey, that’s my culture,” Rizzo thought. “And I realized there was no cosmetic line just for Latinas.”

Grammy swag

When she was developing the idea for Pachuca Cosmetics, Rizzo decided to go upscale. She tossed aside the Sharpie-pen darkness and went with fun, vibrant, bright colors inspired by flashy lowrider paint jobs. The colors in her palette, which she calls her pinstripe collection after the automotive fine lines, seem to sparkle, as if sprinkled with microscopic pieces of chrome.

“I’m drawing my inspiration from the pachucas,” she declares, “but I’m modernizing it.”

While Rizzo kept the rebellious attitude, she stripped away the ethnic tension.

“A modern pachuca,” she says on her website, is “a woman who has the courage to be herself in a world that is trying to make her something else.”

OK, that could be any fashion-forward, modern girl of any color. But that’s the point, says Rizzo the entrepreneur and marketer. La Pachuca these days can be white, black, Latino, Asian — whoever decides to seize the bold look.

Still, Rizzo has a target market: professional Latinas, ages 25 to 36, and younger ones 18 to 24, most of them single but making good money. They aren’t going to show up every day at work in pachuca garb, but parties and Latino fundraisers are fair game.

Since Rizzo’s startup is short on advertising funds, she has kept her day job. She’s steadily reaching customers by offering quick pachuca makeovers at art shows and “pinup” parties sponsored by beauty salons and fans of the look. She scored a coup recently when her pinstripe palette made it into the swag bag filled with gifts for celebrities at the Latin Grammy Awards.

Rizzo isn’t sure how far the pachuca look will go. How about the swanky Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley’s annual ball in October?

“Why not?” she proclaimed. “I just might do it myself.”

For now, she’s dying to know exactly what actress Eva Longoria and singer Jennifer Lopez did with the pachuca cosmetics in their Latin Grammy bags.

Do you have a story for Eastside/Westside? Contact Joe Rodriguez at 408-920-5767 or jrodriguez@mercurynews.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/joerodmercury.