100 Objects #17: M43 Field Jacket

Wool coats in World War I

0:00It's the fall of 1918. The Great War is raging. More than a million American men have found themselves in the Meuse-Argonne offensive on the Western Front. It remains, to this day, the deadliest campaign in our military's history, and the conditions were horrendous.

0:17So it's rainy, it's muddy, it's freezing, and this is the beginning of trench warfare. These soldiers are hanging out in ditches, in the mud. People are dying everywhere. It's miserable. Avery Truffleman is the host of Articles of Interest, a show about fashion and design. So when she thinks about this miserable, awful war, she thinks about what the soldiers are wearing. They are in wool overcoats, which, you know, if you're going on a walk and it's cold outside, wool can be a really great fabric.

0:54If you're a soldier fighting and running for your life, a giant wool overcoat is horrible because it gets really wet and it gets really heavy and then you want to take it off and then suddenly you're freezing. You just have one wool blanket that is usually wet and dirty and then they were trapped in these awful things. The very thing that was supposed to keep these soldiers safe and warm instead caused a lot of harm. Because back then, the military didn't consider fashion a technology.

1:28They were focused on weapons, artillery, supply lines, communication. They didn't think of clothing as something to help or hurt the war effort. It was just what soldiers wore. And beyond that, the American military went into World War I totally unprepared for the climate. We had fought a war abroad before the Spanish-American War, which was like a warm weather war. And that's when we started wearing khaki. But we had never fought in like the wilds of Northern Europe before.

2:00This is like extremely cold, exotic climate for the United States. And we didn't really know what we were doing yet on a large scale. So a lot of soldiers suffered. Did the military realize they had made a mistake issuing these coats to soldiers? Absolutely. Once the war ended, they were like, we've got to find a better jacket. But after the Great War, they were like, let's not focus on war right now. We're never going to have a big war ever again. That was really bad. Yeah, it was the war to end all wars. The war to end all wars. Yeah. So like that was a weird experiment. They didn't think that they needed to revisit or redesign such a jacket for such an expansive war in Europe.

2:39But when it proved true that we did end up fighting another giant war in Europe, it was time to revisit this jacket problem. The jacket problem. How should the American military outfit its soldiers to make them as safe and effective as possible? And how should such a jacket be developed? And underneath that, what happens when a symbol of military might gets stripped of its connection to the military and hits the streets?

3:09From 99% Invisible and BBC Studios, this is a history of the United States in 100 Objects. I'm Roman Mars. Today, the incredible origin and evolution of the M43 Army field jacket. The field jacket changed what it meant to be a soldier and to look like a soldier. And it changed what we all wear every day. Not only Americans, but all around the world.

Copying foreign military fashion

3:34The United States military did not put their soldiers in wool overcoats because they thought it was the best technology. They did it because other countries put their soldiers in wool overcoats. For more than a century, they had just copied the current military superpower of the moment. You can see this very clearly in the Revolutionary War. We're basically dressing exactly like the British. It's just like they're wearing red.

4:04We're not. Then you see this in the Civil War where we're actually dressing French. Like that was the superpower at the time. And it's funny because when you look at it, we do kind of look like the soldiers from the Nutcracker. It's very like jaunty little tin soldiers. But that's what we're imitating. We're imitating the French. And then we had this really weird period, which is my favorite in military history, where we were imitating the Prussians. And we wore like plumed hats and the helmets with the little spike on top.

4:34Like we wore those. We just copied whoever was the global superpower at the time. And that was the way military fashion worked. It was like we want to look like the powerful ones. And that decision was sort of made top down. So by 1941, it's clear that the U.S. is going to join World War II. And the military knows it needs a better jacket. So how does it approach this problem? So there were a few kind of improvised solutions that were made. This one general, General Parsons, was like, my boys need something a little lighter just to wear when they're going out.

5:07When it's just a little windy and they don't want a full wool coat. And so what he did was he ordered like 300 golf jackets, like members only jackets. And he picked the parts he liked and he was like, sew these all together. And then they made this golf jacket, which was like so cool. So it's like a zip up jacket, basically. It's like a windbreaker. Comes in like a khaki-ish color. Little slip pockets on the side. It looks very modern. And this cool windbreaker became known colloquially as the Parsons jacket after General Parsons.

5:42All the soldiers wanted one, although they were terrible for soldiers. If you raised your arm, your belly would get exposed. Really didn't work if it was a little cold outside. It was not a very pragmatic, practical, like soldier-looking jacket. And so eventually all these battalions, one by one, were like, well, we want our version of the Parsons jacket. Like, can we make one for parachuting? Can we make one for tankers? Can we make one that's lined for cold environments?

6:14And then the government is like issuing all these limited edition drops of this jacket for all these different battalions. And it is so impractical. It's like jacket chaos. Yeah. So there's an effort to streamline this to make the one perfect jacket. So talk to me about how you take on that monumental task.

Designing with Chauncey the copper dummy

6:35This grand task was taken on by a professor named Georges Doriot. He was a business professor at Harvard. He was an immigrant. He was French. And he was a high-ranking official in the French military. And he was like, I can feel this war coming. I'm probably going to be put in charge of some big thing because I'm a business professor and a veteran. And so he kind of decided to work in the logistics arm. And he was like, I'll do this. And he sort of volunteered himself. He was like, they need someone who knows how to organize things.

7:05The funny thing is, George Doriot is not famous for his work in jacket organizing. He is famous for being the inventor of venture capital. This whole thing is a giant footnote in his life. Which is, I mean, it's very funny that this whole story is just like a fun fact about this guy. Anyway, so he takes on whatever projects the military needs help doing. And this big project that they present to him is like, okay, we need a jacket. We need one superior jacket that will look great, work in every environment for every job that a soldier has to do.

7:40It's a huge task. And Doriot does this amazing thing. He starts working from first principles. Again, this sounds so obvious now. But before this, the military was just being like, who's the most powerful military? Or what does some general want? This guy is like, well, what does keep people warm? You know, like, what does repel the rain? And even though the field of physiology was budding, and yeah, there were all these labs at Harvard that were putting students on treadmills and testing how much they could sweat and body heat retention, no one had done this to clothing yet.

8:17He was like, well, let's spray water at this jacket. You know, let's blow wind at this jacket. Let's use laboratories. Let's really figure out objectively what the best jacket is. And George Doriot was so invested in finding the objectively greatest jacket that he was like, human test subjects aren't even enough anymore because what's cold to you? What's warm to you? So he ordered a copper dummy that was fitted out with sensors. And then they put the dummy in the cold and in the heat and overnight and put different jackets on the dummy and tested, okay, which jacket keeps the dummy the warmest?

8:52I mean, rigorous, rigorous, repeated tests. Yeah. And the copper mannequin had a name. Yes. The mannequin's name was Chauncey.

9:02Very important point.

9:06And this is what makes me live out. You know, he was like, what will make the boys the most comfortable? Like, how beautiful is that? It wasn't about emulating some other army. It wasn't about what some high-ranking general wanted. It was about the people, the army of the people, and, like, making sure they were comfortable and they were safe and they were protected. And it just makes me want to, like, tear up a little. I'm like, this is what we were supposed to be doing the whole time.

9:37It's so cool. Yeah. And this was wild at the time to be like, we're going to treat clothes like a technology. This is as important as developing a tank or a bomb or anything else. This is military technology. Okay. So, after putting Chauncey through, you know, rigorous dusting, what did they find? They found that there is no one perfect jacket. They found that the best way to get different temperatures for different environments is to use a radical new concept called layering.

10:11Which is like, womp, womp. I could have told you that. But they discovered that. That's what they discovered. But you couldn't have told us that in 1941. I definitely could not have told you that. Because they were like, oh, we just have this one wool jacket and this one lighter jacket. No, this was so revolutionary. This idea of layering. The layers that George Dorio's team came up with included a liner for warmth, a parka for the cold, and a waterproof shell for rain.

10:43It was all part of a system. And at the heart of this system was a jacket. It is a cotton sateen, olive drab, floppy field jacket. Four large cargo pockets. Two at the hip, two at the breast. It's got adjustable cuffs. It's about hip length drawstrings around the waist so that you could tighten all the layers around yourself. It had this collar that you could turn up against the wind. It had all these features. But it wasn't about the jacket. It was about like the layers of the jacket and the system of the jacket.

11:17And this scientific system of a jacket was called the M43. And the M stands for model, 1943, year it was made. M43 jacket. Which is a, you know, scientific name for this, like, piece of science. It was so radical looking. I mean, now it doesn't look so weird because all modern outdoor clothes look like this. They're all modular. They're all a little baggy. They all have these different layers and hoods and elements and drawstrings and stuff like that.

11:49This was so complete. I mean, this was alien. Early jackets came with instructions printed on the inside of like, when it's raining, put on your hood and, you know, tighten it with the drawstrings. It is kind of frumpy. Like, it's sort of like, it's sort of born with wrinkles and the wrinkles never come out. And it's not the tight, soldierly, you know, look. And you were supposed to live in this thing. And it had been tested not only in the laboratory, but they also took later prototypes of it out into the field, into a battle in Italy.

12:27They sent it to a thousand troops and got their feedback. And, you know, the pockets were specifically designed to fit a ration pack. You know, you could really live out of these things. They were sort of perfectly designed for the life of the average foot soldier. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the product testing with actual soldiers in the field and also the focus on function and comfort seems completely new. Super new. Super duper new. It was not about looks. It was not a costume.

12:57It was scientific, democratic, and it treated the soldier as kind of this new job in this new kind of war. So it's called M-43, which means it was developed in 1943. Was this this eureka moment? They found the jacket, therefore it was outfitted with everyone, and therefore we won the war. Hooray. You'd think. You'd think. You'd be like, yay, you did it. George Dorio, you found the perfect jacket.

General Littlejohn and the ETO jacket

13:24Nope, nope, nope. Because this is the part where we encounter the villain of our story. And his name was General Robert McGowan Littlejohn. General Littlejohn. And General Littlejohn is a career soldier. He went to West Point. You know, he played it all completely by the book. He rose up the ranks and he ended up as the quartermaster for the European Theater of Operations. And the quartermaster is basically the one in charge of logistics. They're in charge of boots, beans, and bullets, getting supplies to the boys in Europe.

13:58And in 1943, this meant England and Italy. And, like, pretend we haven't talked about the M-43, right? Okay, yeah. So in 1941 and 42, the military has the Parsons jacket, which is very cool looking, but not practical. And different divisions want their own versions. Okay, so we're back in jacket chaos early on. Littlejohn is over in Europe and he sees all this jacket chaos and he's like, I'm going to fix it. He doesn't really know that the government is planning this giant—

14:29It's like Manhattan Project of jackets is happening. Yeah. He doesn't know. He doesn't realize that. And he's doing it the old school way where he's like, I'm a high-ranking general. I'm going to take matters into my own hands. I'm going to make a jacket. And I'm going to make the one jacket that every soldier will need. So he functionally likes the look of the British battle dress jacket. And based on that, he goes to a factory in England and he's like, make me one of those with a few little tweaks. And he makes, admittedly, a very sharp looking jacket. I love it.

15:00It's like a wool jacket, but it's short-waisted. It's very tight. It's very dignified. It's very General Eisenhower. Yeah. You got to be shaped like a Dorito chip to pull this off. It's like a very tight-fitting, elegant jacket. Yeah, yeah. And for him, he's like, oh, great. Now this is like a more practical version of the wool jacket. Soldiers don't have to change back and forth between their fancy dress and their battle dress. This will be the one jacket to rule them all. He calls it the ETO jacket, ETO standing for European Theater of Operations.

15:31And it has like a tie. It's not—compared to what was happening with all the jacket chaos, it is more practical. But when you know that the M43 jacket is like secretly being developed in a laboratory, the ETO jacket kind of looks like a joke. Yeah. You know? Because, you know, he's a general. So like his version of a versatile jacket is you stand out on a battlefield occasionally and then you go to a dinner occasionally or something like that. You know what I mean? Like those are his versions.

16:01It's not like a trench or, you know, jumping out of a plane or— Yeah, I think it'd been a while since he'd been like boots on the ground. He didn't really know what had been—a lot had changed in his time. And so—but what is his thinking? Like he must have some recognition that this is not the most practical jacket in the world. So what does Little John like about this? Yeah. So a big part of his logic, which I am sympathetic to, this is a time, World War II, it's a huge draft. There are men pouring into the European theater who have never fought before.

16:36They've never known this kind of discipline. And to Little John, he sees the jacket as this soldier-making tool. Like you want to be a soldier? You got to dress like a soldier. In the same way that's like you got to make your bed, you got to stand up straight, you got to wear this nice jacket. You got to come correct, you got to look good. You know, this is not about being comfortable. We're at war. And also, I think a lot of it was presenting the American military to a European audience. Like looking good, looking classy.

17:07So this ambition does not a villain make. No. What makes General Little John a villain? What makes a villain a villain is vindictiveness. And what's really fitting is I met this incredible military historian named Joshua Kerner. Kerner is really, really into archives and research, almost obsessively. And he's uncovered a lot of this story of the field jacket that I'm about to tell you. But basically, Kerner was going through old documents and realized General Little John did something really terrible.

17:43So what did General Little John do? Little John first catches wind of the M43 jacket. He was like, these look sloppy. What is this? What is this thing that the government back at home is making without consulting me? My jackets are so much better than this frumpy, ugly stuff. He, like, makes a vow then and there that he will stop the M43 jacket from ever reaching the wider military.

18:15Wow. So how does he go about stopping this? He has a tremendous amount of power. You know, he's in charge of all the supplies going into the European theater. And as the M43 jacket is slowly getting rolled out, and Dorio's like, here you go, here's this jacket that I lovingly made and it's perfect. Little John's like, no, get those away from me, over my dead body, never. Our man of science, Dorio, is begging Little John, like, please, please take these jackets. You know, like, winter, winter is coming and you have to order these in advance.

18:47And this is a serious winter. And he just refuses to order them. In fact, there reaches a point where M43 jackets are, like, packed up, ready to go to Europe. And he was like, nope, we got it. I made a jacket. I'm fine. Like, we're just going to wear my jacket over here. We don't need that. And he's making excuses. He's dragging his feet. He's putting it off for so long. And he's not really being transparent about, like, I hate these jackets. He's just like, no, no, no, thanks.

The cold weather crisis

19:12You know, we don't need these. So in the fall of 1944, it doesn't seem like the war is slowing down anytime soon. It's expanding throughout Europe. And all the quartermasters throughout the European theater of operations under Little John are turning to Little John and they're like, hey, we don't have those new jackets that we heard about. We're probably unprepared. You can actually, like, Kerner found this letter from someone to Little John and you can see how they have to tiptoe around him. He's like, just maybe, possibly it will be colder than you think.

19:45Like, I know that you think you don't need these jackets, but maybe you do. It's like, and he, you can tell what a tyrant he is. Like, no one feels comfortable being like, please order the jackets. Finally, in the fall of 1944, Little John gives in to the undeniable superiority of the M43 jacket. Yeah, Little John acquiesces and is like, okay, fine, fine. Let the jackets in. I don't even care, whatever. But all that gear is waiting back in the United States, so it takes months to reach the troops in Europe.

20:15Most troops will not begin receiving M43 jackets and adequate sleeping bags and footwear and all the other stuff Dorio designed until January 1945. They had to go through, like, you know, September, October, November, December, freezing.

20:32So by the time winter hits, they're in ETO jackets. They're in, like, dress jackets. And it's, it's horrible. They were freezing. Many of them developed trench foot, which is disgusting. Like, I don't want to gross anybody out, but, like, your skin falls off. It's nasty. And this is World War II. Communication technology has gotten really good. Like, people know.

21:03Americans are getting notes from their sons being like, mom, dad, I'm freezing out here. I'm given inadequate jackets. There's a sense of outrage that is building back at home of, like, why aren't our boys being taken care of? They're going to freeze to death out here. They start complaining. They turn to the press. They turn to the New York Times and the Washington Post. And this becomes a massive scandal.

21:30It's called the cold weather crisis. It's a huge deal. I, you know, Joshua Kerner brought me into the Quartermaster archives. And we were looking at old newspapers that were covering this. This was on, like, page four of the Washington Post. This is not, like, style section stuff. It's just unignorable. So does Little John ever get his comeuppance? Like, does he ever get blamed for this? No. Like, no one pins this on General Little John at all. Huh. He completely gets away with it.

22:00Huh. How does he manage that? Because it's great to be friends with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yeah. Who essentially, like, ran interference for his buddy from West Point. And, you know, Eisenhower also loved the ETO jacket. He understood where his friend was coming from. And he issues a press moratorium. You can't say anything bad about the ETO jackets. And he's like, this is for morale. You know, we have to support the troops. And we can't gang up on leadership. But, like, we all know why.

22:31It was friend nepotism. It was friend nepotism. Yeah. Uh, so the M43 fuel jacket finally makes its way to soldiers in Europe in 1945. No thanks to Little John. Uh, what happens next? Everybody is wearing these amazing jackets. And the military is cranking these things out. Especially because we are in the thick of World War II. You and you and I both know, as people of the future, that there will be an atomic bomb and it will end World War II. Yeah. But no one knows that the real Manhattan Project is actually happening.

23:05Yeah. And most people in the military did not know that. It's widely believed that this war is just going to go on for years. Yeah, like, even after the theater of Europe is sort of won. Yeah. People thought we were going to invade Japan. Like, this was going to be like five more years, you know? Just like outfitting soldiers to go into Japan and occupy that as best they possibly could. Yeah. Again, the scale of this draft is massive. There's like 12 million men. It's huge.

23:36And so, every domestic manufacturing company in the United States is just cranking out these jackets. Stockpiling them for this future war that's going to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on. And then it ends. Really suddenly. And really horrifically. Yeah. And in the wake of the destruction and the existential crisis created by the atomic bomb, in way lesser, way lower on the scale of problems, but still a problem, is the fact that the United States government has all these clothes they made.

24:14Yeah. They made so, so many clothes. Like, warehouses and warehouses and warehouses. And so, what do they do? They got to get rid of it. They got to get rid of it as quickly as possible. And fun fact, the person in charge of getting rid of it was none other than General Robert McGowan Little John, which is so funny.

Surplus stores and Banana Republic

24:36And so, this is where military surplus stores come in. And granted, we had had military surplus stores before, but they were little. They were like little specialty stores. We had never had industrial scale mass manufacturing cranking out millions of jackets on this scale before. And for a generation of Americans that had grown up during the Great Depression and didn't have big closets, this was amazing. Like, the military surplus store, most of the stuff had never been worn.

25:07And they would, like, stock these things for a song. And it's just how everybody dressed. Everybody dressed this way. It wasn't even considered a style. It wasn't considered, like, oh, this military style stuff. It was just, like, where you went to get your basics. Before there was Walmart, there was the military surplus store. And now they have this scientifically tested jacket that can serve a lot of people in a lot of different climates. And it's actually really great. Yeah. Now it's, like, this jacket that was the height of sophistication is available for everyone for really cheap.

25:40I will say, so much of menswear comes from this era. Whatever we're like, oh, this is classic menswear. It's military surplus style. You can ask any brand, even ones that just seem like they make normal, basic clothes. They will all tell you that it comes from the military. It's the blueprint. This is what's considered the bedrock of classic menswear style in the 20th century. And yet, the military is still making clothes and still scientifically iterating on them.

26:14The evolution doesn't stop. Yeah, because wars don't stop. They just keep coming.

26:36It's now the mid-1960s. The draft is in effect for the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands of men who have never been to war are getting turned into soldiers. And part of that transformation still includes the field jacket. They're wearing a new version of it, the souped-up version called the M65. It has some rad new features, like a rolled-up hood, and it's got Velcro on the sleeves. Oh, right. But the interesting thing is, now there is this sort of pipeline where the military is making new clothes and sort of ending up in surplus stores almost immediately.

27:12It's really interesting. Like, we'd never had this before, where anyone can just kind of waltz in and buy something that is or looks pretty similarly to what soldiers are actually wearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, all around the country. This is a weird moment in American fashion history. At a weird moment in American military history.

Anti-war protests and mainstream style

27:35Yeah, and it is, what is particularly, like, interesting about this moment is that people have the ability to look like soldiers at the same time that soldiers are looking like soldiers. The same clothes, exact same clothes. When our collective feeling about those wars is really complicated. Really, really complicated. And the thing that's so fascinating is as civilians and soldiers kind of start to dress alike, they have not dissimilar opinions.

28:09You know, the draft was still going on. People were being drafted into Vietnam who didn't want to be there. You know, like, the military-civilian divide is not a gaping crevasse like we might think of it today. So, a lot of soldiers return home from Vietnam still wearing their field jackets. And you start to see them wear their field jackets to protest. And then they start defacing their jackets with peace signs and patches. And this is really new because, again, after World War II, these have just been, like, standard jackets.

28:45You know, the stuff from the military surplus stores, like, good clothes, like, nice quality clothes. They weren't making a statement about the military. They were just basics. And now the people who are subverting the field jacket know what they're doing. They're taking the military's imagery away from them. They turn it into a symbol of the anti-war movement. And it was so offensive to deface these things and draw on them in this way. You know, this adoption becomes, like, so complete that, in a way, seeing a person in a military jacket indicates a radical, almost.

29:26You know, it becomes, like, an outsider. It is not a buttoned-up General Little John soldier. It is a different type of character. Yeah, yeah, exactly. After the draft ends in 1973, the jacket just straight up doesn't mean soldier anymore. It means, like, young, disaffected, probably socially unstable young veteran. Like, you can see this in Serbico and Taxi Driver. Like, it replaces the denim or the leather jacket.

29:57It's, like, what tough guys wear. It becomes radical. It's, like, this shocking punk thing. And so what does this mean for the field jacket? Like, this is, as described, like, the most perfect military piece of fashion that's ever been created. And now it is associated with totally different things. Yeah, I mean, it essentially becomes fashion, which, I mean, that's the stereotypical way that fashion works, right? Like, outsiders and rebels and punks wear it.

30:27And then as people start seeing it in, like, Serbico and Taxi Driver, it, like, starts to edge into the mainstream. And, you know, in the 70s, you really start seeing, like, the yuppification of the field jacket. Like, you can see Woody Allen wearing it and Annie Hall as he's, like, waiting to go see an independent movie at Film Forum. And, like, Dustin Hoffman is a dad on the Upper West Side wearing it and Kramer vs. Kramer. And Army surplus stores realize that this is now fashion, this field jacket.

30:59And they start billing themselves as more of a fashion outpost. And the field jacket gets even further from its military origins. Surplus stores begin to cater directly to this fashion crowd. They dye their field jackets, style them with belts, even draw on them. Soon the trend goes beyond the traditional surplus industry. Boutiques start popping up with the specific purpose of putting their own spin on military surplus. And one of these people is a lady named Patricia Ziegler.

31:31She was an artist in San Francisco in the 70s. And one day her husband came home from a reporting trip to Australia. And when he came back, he was wearing this British Burma jacket. A military surplus jacket from Australia. I noticed it right away, not because it looked military. It looked really safari rugged. It was kind of like exotic and swashbuckling looking. And she was like, maybe other people would want to buy it too. So they found a way to buy 500 surplus Spanish paratrooper jackets.

32:05Okay. But, you know, they're like these weird old used jackets. They didn't really sell until Patricia started styling them a little bit. I put one on Mel with the sleeves rolled up and the collar turned up. And I put on one with tight jeans and belted it. And we sold over 100. So she went home and she took two of these shirts apart and she sewed them together and she turned them into a dress. Some other ones. I took off the epaulettes and made a waistband, took off the arms. I said, doing our part for a disarmament here.

32:38And we made a skirt. And so Mel said, oh, we've got a business. I got to find a place to open a store. So they found this tiny store that was 400 square feet. And they were like, this will be our thing. We'll take military surplus from all over the world. And we will put our own spin on it and make a fashionable, adventurous little bohemian line of clothes. And they opened their store in 1978 and they call it Banana Republic.

33:06Isn't that crazy? That's amazing. So Banana Republic started as sort of an international army surplus store. Yeah, basically. But early on in the 70s, Patricia realized that they were running up against a fundamental problem with their business model, which is that it was the late 70s and early 80s. And the global supply of military surplus was dwindling. And like, this is a good thing. You only get military surplus when you have a giant military and wars and huge groups of

33:42people that you have to clothe. Like, by the 80s, the United States' supply of their own military surplus was kind of dwindling. And slowly, other countries were like joining the fold of liberal capitalist democracies and ending their drafts. And, you know, like, this is a great problem for the world. It was very horrible for Patricia. She would be up late at night being like, I don't think we have enough clothes. Like, this stuff is getting harder to find.

34:14This is like a huge, huge problem. Yeah. Especially if your business is built on international army surplus, this is a huge problem. They were like, I think we have to start making these clothes. I think we have to start making them from scratch. And that was part of the reason that they were acquired by The Gap in 1983. And that's how you start getting stores popping up all over the world, keeping the ethos of the original store, but they were mass producing new versions of surplus, including the field jacket. Like, The Gap is making versions of field jackets with Banana Republic. Yeah. Yeah. So the evolution of this goes into eventually, like, you get a Banana Republic that has sort

34:51of no association with army surplus whatsoever. You would never guess that association. So where does that leave us in terms of the field jacket? Like, where would you find a field jacket today? Literally everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. Like, Prada makes a version of it. Old Navy makes a version of it. You can look, sometimes I like to look on the street and be like, how many of these are military jackets? Even if they're not dark green, it's like, oh, a four pocket jacket with some sort of cinching in the middle. It's like, that's just a design of a jacket that works really, really well.

35:25I was just sent a bunch of clothes from a new designer and they're like, check out our designs. And it was a field jacket. I was like, are you kidding me? They are everywhere these days. It's a classic. It's barely even associated with the military anymore. It's just a jacket. The field jacket started as a tool for the military to win wars. It became the symbol of a soldier. It evolved from there to something radical and then became something stripped of meaning altogether because it's just a great looking jacket.

35:57And the field jacket endures today, not just because of how good it looks, but how well it functions and the scientific and thoughtful way it was designed. Yeah, this, in addition to the fact that you see it everywhere and every brand makes a version of it, the fact that this was a jacket that was designed and tested in a laboratory, specifically on Chauncey, the copper dummy, this is just how clothes are made now. You know, we like can't imagine a world without this.

36:29Outdoor brands, especially, live and die by testing. So, I got to visit REI. They have testing facilities for their gear that are so similar to the kinds of testing facilities that the government used. Like, they have a cold room, a rain room. They even had a mannequin covered with sensors. It's like their own version of Chauncey. And so, the interesting thing is like, beyond the practicality, this is a look. This, like, crunchy, technical style was invented by the field jacket.

37:04This, like, scientifically tested looking gear. We all dress like technical soldiers now. And it's not just in the United States. We swallowed up everybody else's outdoor culture because it works and it looks cool. So, in the battle between George Dorio and General Littlejohn, even though General Littlejohn was not blamed and really took no fall, he was fighting for a world that was dying. You know, no one was going to dress in suits anymore.

37:37Not soldiers, not any of us. We live in Dorio's world of scientific testing. You know, when you were first doing this, or at some point in the process, when you were talking to me about the field jacket, you were like, this might be the thing that makes me the proudest to be an American.

37:57Could you expand on that? It is. It is. So, I do like that this was a moment when the U.S. government took clothing really, really seriously and made really good stuff. And when our domestic manufacturing was very robust and we made these beautiful jackets that were accessible to everybody. That's point one. I really love that. And I love that they embody the democratic ideals of not looking like a European country or serving a king. It was just about individual soldier comfort.

38:27But I also love what it gave to America. I mean, people went to military surplus stores and they bought these jackets and they bought, you know, tents and backpacks and other things. And they went hiking. You know, this is before outdoor stores were prominent. You know, it helped expand our relationship with the outdoors. Like it was mitigated through these clothes that were suddenly available to everybody. And I love that moment in the 1970s. And I think about it a lot now that the people who were rebelling against the war, you know, the jacket was a very strong anti-war statement, but it wasn't anti-soldier.

39:01You know, they were sort of all wearing it together. Speaking out against the actions of the government, but not of their fellow citizens. It's truly a jacket for the people. And then, of course, it's a great design. So I just think this is the best thing since sliced bread. This is like the most amazing invention. And the fact that it's so incredible and we don't even notice it, as you know, it's like that's a sign of great design. It is. I had never thought about it before. Well, this has been a really fun tour through The Field Jacket.

39:34Thank you so much, Avery Truffman. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Roman.

Credits and show production

39:43The story of The Field Jacket comes from Avery's fantastic show, Articles of Interest. She devoted the entire sixth season to gear and The Field Jacket is just one part of it. The whole thing is amazing. Check it out at articlesofinterest.co. Special thanks to costume historian Charles McFarlane for his research on the topic.

40:04A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios. It's hosted and curated by me, Roman Mars. This episode was produced by Isabel Angel. Our series producers are Priscilla Alabi, Brenna Daldorf, and Ellie Lightfoot. Our associate producer is Isaac Fisher. This series was edited by Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Mixing by Ivor Manley. Fact-checking by Amy Bracken. Our theme song is by Swan Real.

40:34From 99% Invisible, our executive producer is Kathy Tu. From BBC Studios, our executive producers are Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Our production coordinator is Shan Pillay. And the production manager is Mabel Finnegan-Wright. Artwork by Stephen Lawrence. 99% Invisible is part of the SiriusXM podcast family, headquartered in beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. And BBC Studios is headquartered in beautiful, White City, West London.

41:04If you want to get in touch or have an object for us to consider, email us at 100objects at 99pi.org. Thank you. Thank you.

41:20Thank you.