Gear: Chapter 4
Make It Fashion
This is finally when I get to reveal to you who has been doing those drill sergeant introductions.
The drill sergeant you’ve been hearing is none other than Ray Christian. He’s a legendary podcaster, but in his past life he actually was a drill sergeant.
Ray enlisted three years after the Vietnam War ended. But I love this picture from 1987, when Ray is wearing Vietnam-era fatigues. He’s in Panama! But for about ten years, the Army reissued old Vietnam stock
The funny thing is, Ray has been wearing field jackets for a long time. He remembers, back in the 1970s, even when he was off-duty, he could wear his field jacket home, just with jeans. And he would blend in with everyone else. Because everyone wore field jackets. Everyone. Whether they were soldiers or anti-war protestors, all rocked field jackets. Even John Lennon used to wear one:
Back when John Lennon wore his field jacket, this was the height of rebellion, because this was the “uniform” of a generation of drafted soldiers who did not want to fight.
I mean, what better proof than some of these amazing Vietnam-era ebay finds by reporter Jasper Craven
Back at home in the US, the field jackets were worn by the angry young veterans played by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver and Al Pacino in Serpico. This was the uniform of the grizzled outsider
But then, over the course of the 1970s, the field jacket gets yuppified. To the point where its worn by the nebbishy upper class stars of Annie Hall and Kramer Vs. Kramer.
So what happened? Put simply. Military surplus went fashion. You can see what happened when you look at the catalogs from this one surplus store in Philly, called I. Goldberg.
In the 1950s, the I.Goldberg catalog is all Gear. It looks like a catalog for Holubar or Gerry:
And then cut to the 1970s, and I.Goldberg has become a fashion catalog:
The military look became a trend. Unlike the generation before, the generation that treated surplus like cheap basics, now it was cool to really play up the military-ness of surplus. What had started as a true political statement turned into a trend.
And a huge contributing factor in making surplus mainstream was… Banana Republic.
An artist named Patricia and a writer named Mel started Banana Republic in 1978. When it began, the store was as a cheeky take on a surplus, where the clothes were swashbuckling and the interiors made you feel like you were on safari:
You really have to just look at what the pictures of Banana Republic used to look like, it was amazing. And now, modern Banana Republic is starting to embrace this history.
And meanwhile, back in the 1970s, while many new outdoor brands were popping up, a beloved classic brand was on the way out. Abercrombie & Fitch began selling really weird stuff in the 1970s:
Abercrombie & Fitch went bankrupt in the 1970s- setting the stage for them to eventually be bought and re-made in time to terrorize me throughout my middle school years. But their demise was a clear sign to the outdoor companies: don’t get to wild here. Stay in your lane.
Where did I get all these cool catalog images from? THE OUTDOOR RECREATION ARCHIVE! It’s the most amazing place. I got a fellowship to go there, and you can apply for the fellowship to go there too.
And as ever, if you’d like to know more about the military stuff, Charles’ substack is really the place to go
Thanks for allowing Ray to cook - reminds me of listening to my pops talk about his experiences growing up in that same era. The part about soldiering being a mechanism for folks to access the middle class, and not some sort of jingoistic gesture, can’t be overstated. And ironically, the one M65-style jacket I own is not from BR, but from Gap itself (yes, I’ve worn it with business casual….)
Your Playboy cartoon reminded me: In the '80s, I volunteered to run the coat check at a fundraiser for a performance space. The crowd was mostly gay men, and they mostly wore leather bomber jackets that were too heavy for the wire hangers, causing them to collapse unless I used two for each jacket. But there were SO many bomber jackets that I ran out of hangers, and had to stack them. Some people lost their claim tickets, and couldn't tell their jacket from all the others.