Vol. 01 No. 01
Welcome to Combat Threads! I’m Charles McFarlane, a Master’s Student in Costume Studies at NYU. Combat Threads is a peek into my notebook as I research military uniforms and non-elite fashion in the 20th and 21st Centuries. This will be a record of research as I go, with some fully fleshed-out thoughts and lots of threads that I am just beginning to pull on. Far from being arcane, my aim is to speak to the broadest possible audience. Combat Threads will be diving into how military garments found their way into civilian wardrobes to how militaries develop their own internal visual fashion language.
Military uniforms are often mentioned in fashion coverage as a foundational element of menswear or its appropriation as an act of subversion in the latter half of the 20th Century. Much of this places military uniforms in a prescribed fashion context, without diving deeper into how those uniforms were designed, approved, produced, and worn prior to entering the civilian world. A lot of what I will cover here will look deeper at the symbiotic relationship between military garments and the world of fashion.
Some of the research already in the pipeline will cover topics ranging from how military uniforms took over college fashion in the years after WWII, the ethics of wearing camouflage, and how modern wars produce copious amounts of merch. After this brief first issue, Combat Threads will be hitting your inbox every Wednesday for the foreseeable future, with a break towards the end of the year.
Please feel free to reach out. Nearly everyone has a story about military clothing in their life; from wearing old fatigues to going rock climbing, to wearing a relative’s old field jacket through school. I want to hear them and I also want to hear any topics you think are worth getting into. Lastly, if you like the design of Combat Threads, be sure to reach out to wonderful designer Peter McCormack.
Till next week,
C.W.M.
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