Vol. 02 No. 01
Welcome to Combat Threads Volume 02. After a winter hiatus, I am back for some semi-regular musings on the clothing of and relating to war. But I haven’t been slacking this whole time I’ve been away. At the very end of the year, I wrote a piece on Realtree camouflage’s takeover in the trendier corners of New York for GQ. For Combat Threads Volume 02, I will be doing more serialized stories over multiple weeks, interviews with interesting folks, and more of a dive into my own collection. To kick us off, I will be sharing excerpts from my research on the T-shirt craze of the Gulf War.
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If you spend any time in thrift stores or online looking for vintage clothing, you will undoubtedly run across Gulf War T-shirts. I first took notice of these T-shirts when I started using Depop a few years ago, astounded by the quantity being sold and the endless variety of designs and slogans. The T-shirts are very 90s in design, with pop-culture references and bright colors and graphics. I could see how young resellers looking for single-stitch 90s band and pop-culture T-shirts might end up grabbing these from the bins at Goodwill.
The seemingly endless designs and inexhaustible supply I found online and in-person made me curious about why they were made at all. I wasn’t alive for the Gulf War, but I didn’t see T-shirts like these in 2003 when the US invaded Iraq. What was it about the Gulf War that led to T-shirts with graphics of Bart Simpson strangling Saddam Hussein to be made?
The Gulf War saw an unprecedented outpouring of pro-American sentiment in the country and near-endless media coverage. US President George H. W. Bush delivered numerous televised speeches and remarks and daily pentagon press briefings. During the month-long war, the conflict was broadcast around the clock. CNN’s rating went up 271 percent. The eight-hour time difference to the East Coast allowed television channels to carry footage of the war in prime time. The coverage of the war became devoid of critical questioning and just a constant never-ending collection of visual data (a map of Iraq, a Scud missile, a camouflage pattern, a blown-up tank, black smoke of an oil field, grainy footage of a bomb strike, gas masks, etc.). The war was presented to the US public purely through entertainment.
Media coverage of the T-shirt trend began in the Fall of 1990, a few months after the initial Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait. On October 15, 1990, the Virginian Pilot published “Saddam To a `T’ Desert Shield Fashions Latest In,” referring to the US military operation name to build up to the war. Various T-shirt styles appear with interviews with local Virginia screen printers and vendors.
Simple shirts with ‘Desert Shield’ printed on them, along with a design of a robe-clad cartoon riding a camel with rifle crosshairs over him with the phrase “I’d fly 10,000 miles to smoke a camel” printed on it. This was a riff on the longstanding Camel cigarette advertisement slogan “I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” This kind of appropriation of commercial advertising for humor and double entendre (In this case, “smoke” means to kill instead of inhaling) is foundational to slogan T-shirts. These local printers in Virginia Beach had already sold 18,000 shirts (sold by the dozen) to sellers from Cuba to New England and then sold individually at $12.95. “This country is in the grip of Operation Desert Shield chic.”
Next week I will be continuing the story of Desert Storm T-shirts looking at specific designs and the public response.
Till next time,
C.W.M.
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