🔥FIRE SALE🔥 No. 17 - An Interview with Five-Star Jawns General Charles McFarlane 🎖
🪖Military surplus, ☠Eastern Bloc camo, 🇺🇸 American upcycling origins, and more
Growing up in a post-9/11 world, the messages we received about the military were pretty confusing. Bush sucked. American Idiot rocked. Jon Stewart hated the Iraq War, but basically, everyone I knew in Indiana supported it. There was Abu Ghraib, but also a deluge of media venerating The Great Generation. We weren’t ridiculing the troops the way people did when Vietnam veterans returned home, but we weren’t exactly pumped. The complicated nature of these conflicts made the clothing complicated, too. Unlike a WWII bomber jacket, digital camo wasn’t very good at hiding the morally sticky wars (or soldiers for that matter). It’s left me wondering, how does a new generation who didn’t grow up with the strange contradictions of the early 2000s relate to military apparel?Â
Charles McFarlane, historian, writer, and clothing connoisseur, was gracious enough to chat with 🔥FIRE SALE🔥, about his latest for The Gray Lady – Not Your Grandpa’s Military Surplus, where he spoke with some members of that new generation of military surplus sellers.Â
Make sure to read his excellent substack ​​Combat Threads. I especially liked the piece on the July 1986 issue of The Face, which included a spread on Beiruit militants' fashion during the Lebanese Civil War. Also, check his WWII jungle sweater reproduction, which he promises will be back in stock soon.
In our conversation, we touched on military surplus history, jackets in The Masters of Air, get to the bottom of whether military uniforms have gotten worse, and his-not-so-secret vintage shopping secrets.
Q: I really enjoyed your profile in The New York Times of Americana Pipedream, a store that I’ve linked to in this newsletter before. What interested you in the subject?Â
A: I thought what was really interesting about them, and I think, in general, the scene that's kind of popping up, is how much the majority of these small, digital storefronts are run by kids who literally missed their last years of high school or early years of college education. The guys from Americana Pipedream, said straight up to me, ‘yeah, this would not have happened without COVID’.
A lot of the vintage military guys on Instagram are really dealing almost exclusively in grails. I thought what was really interesting about the guys at Americana Pipedream was how much they really didn't care that much about the military surplus side of things. This is not a passion project in the same way. I think it actually allows them to grow and sell in a certain way that I think actually really helps them because they're not totally hung up on the purity. They don't need to have the thing that's super rare. They’re selling $15.99 shirts, instead of like, $500, deck jackets. That's how you make money. That's how you grow.
Q: I caught your thesis presentation when you were studying costume studies at NYU. One of my favorite parts of your presentation was your focus on modified camo jackets from Vietnam. When did Americans start modifying military clothing?
A: Immediately after World War Two, when you had some 11 million Americans coming back to the United States from overseas, or just leaving the military, you had a huge shortage of men's clothing. In 1946 and 1947, that was quite a big issue for a lot of guys coming home. You have a lot of guides for returning GIs on how to turn their uniforms into civilian clothing. A lot of stuff on dyeing your olive drab wool clothing, and what colors do certain things, and you have a lot of advertising in newspapers for dry cleaning services that are offered dying to returning GIs to make their clothes more civilian. I collect a lot of things myself, and I always have my eyes open for overdyed stuff from the post-war period. How far back is changing or modifying? I mean, what we basically call today, upcycling, goes at least to the late 1940s. But that said, definitely going back further, to the Civil War to the Revolutionary War, there were times when mostly men leaving the service would definitely continue to wear their clothing, and modify it and change it as needed.
Q: These days, it seems that the majority of the new surplus is coming from the Eastern Bloc. How has that affected people's dressing?
A: Just like the way our culture has moved, basically, anything goes as far as dress, and we're completely in a postmodern world when it comes to how we dress that basically, you can just wear Eastern Bloc camo, and no one would be like, ‘Oh, that guy from the Eastern Bloc.’ You can wake up in the morning and be like, ‘I want to be a cowboy, or I want to be a Soviet soldier, or I want to be a worker from the 1930s’. So I think, in that way, we just have stocks of that stuff that can just be incorporated into people's fashion rather easily.
Q: Is stuff from the most recent American wars – The War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War in the mix at all?
A: As far as the more contemporary stuff from, say, Iraq or Afghanistan, the stuff is out there. It's just all gotten very different. You have a lot of private companies who make products for the military, which has been the case for a very long time, but they're making a lot of stuff that might be considered surplus to people like you and I, and are actually not in the surplus system at all are just things like, camouflage uniforms that were made and never entered government supply systems. Then they just kind of ended up in a surplus store. So they're kind of knockoffs of themselves.
Q: How long have you been interested and collecting military clothing?
A: I've been collecting military uniforms, basically, since I was like 10 years old. And I've been kind of incorporating those into my everyday fashion at least since I was in high school. I've probably gotten more of the modern stuff in the past few years when gorpcore was becoming a thing. There's a very obviously rich history of the connection between the outdoor industry and the military. Essentially, their cold weather clothing systems with, multiple layers – fleece, high loft down jacket, and all of these kinds of things like that. I love that stuff. Like the British Royal Navy. They have great cargo pants. A friend of mine has these cargo pants from APC, and they look exactly the same.
Q: Is there a contradiction at the center of military surplus military style? It’s a uniform meant for everyone to look exactly the same, but it seems like it's one of the most conducive ways for people to express their own personal style.
A: When you think about the armies of World War Two, basically through Vietnam, these are mostly conscript armies. You have these national service or conscript armies that are made up of civilians who are being asked to do a certain amount of service. I think you see this a lot in memoirs from guys who were in the military during World War Two – they are trying to hang on by their fingernails any sense of personal identity. So, even in the military context, these uniforms are being worn and adorned in a way that can be conducive to some form of personal identity. I think what is similar to surplus clothing and, say, other key tenants of American style like jeans, tennis sneakers, T-shirts, sweatshirts, and Ivy style to an extent – these are all very much plain styles that are not overly flashy at all, but what they are, is that they're building blocks and that's what I think it makes so conducive to someone's personal style. You're basically using this raw material that you can build into your own personal style and create your self-image in a way that you can't with like something that's like more overly stylized or overly connected to a trend cycle or connected to kind of a broader fashion system.
Q: Are there any films that you think embody this?
A: This is not going to be very original. One of my favorite movies for workwear and surplus style, and also, honestly, an amazing movie, is Serpico. I mean, NYPD police officer Frank Serpico – he's fighting corruption in the police department, and part of his look is he is kind of a hippie cop. He wears a lot of military surplus from the 1960s and 1970s.
Q: Has military style gotten worse?
A: I think worse is kind of, giving away the hand a little bit. I think what you're hitting on is that for most of the 20th century, there was a very strong connection between American popular style and popular culture, and the military uniforms and military culture. Then as the army has gotten smaller and more professionalized, that has kind of disconnected, right, where the military now has, very much its own culture and its own sense of style and identity, in a way that is not as connected to American popular culture and style. So in that way, like you say, like, ‘Oh, is that why military style has gotten worse’, but it's not that it's worse – it's not even in conversation with broader American style and trends,
Q: Have you been watching Masters of Air? That show seems to be mostly about the jackets.
A: Sometimes I wonder what came first, the chicken or the egg? Do we think that bomber jackets look cool because they are inherently cool and sexy? The US Army Air Force during World War Two, which was not a separate branch yet, was part of the army and was very deft at doing its own promotional work. They hired a group of essentially Madison Avenue advertising men to come on board to really help craft their narrative and craft their story. It's very much a manufactured thing. It's not organic.
Q: Now to the important stuff – shopping. Where are you looking for vintage threads in New York?
A: I'm very biased because he's like a very good friend of mine and my next-door neighbor, but I think Crowley Vintage, run by Sean Crowley, is straight up the best vintage store in the country. The quantity is just so, so overwhelming. I really highly recommend that to everybody.
Q: What’s the last thing you got from Crowley?
A: This is such a bad question for me. I'm one of those vintage people who's like, ‘I'll go find that.’ For me, it's the hunt. The hunt is the thrill. So a lot of times, I could find it in a store, but I could spend months trying to find this instead of buying the one that's right in front of me.
Q: Do you have any next-level tips for vintage fiends or under-the-radar spots worth checking out?
A: I spend a lot of time trolling through all the different apps that you can imagine. It’s not a store but more of a vibe – 1970s workwear. It's not super expensive. A lot of its still 100% natural, fibers. You can still find such great stuff there. I don't think people understand how unique of a situation we have with the L-Train vintage ecosystem and Urban Jungle. If you go behind Urban Jungle or L-Train, they're getting tractor-trailer loads of rags, and they're going through bundles, and they're picking out the best stuff, and that's not normal. Â
You can follow Charles on Instagram. In the meantime, throw on Band of Brothers and take notes on the drip the greatest generation bestowed upon us while they beat the Nazis all the way back to Berlin.Â