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Scouring Surplus with Charles McFarlane
70 Plays1 year ago
We go deep in the stacks with @combat_threads’ Charles McFarlane to explore the complex relationship between the military and clothing. Surplussed false teeth, what’s wrong with the M65 Field Jacket, Charles’ first really big score, research tips, rejecting grail culture, and more.
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Transcript
Introduction to Apocalypse Duds Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Greetings. I'm Connor Fowler. And I'm Matt Smith. And you are now listening to Apocalypse Duds. We are joined today by NYU Costume Studies Master Student, founder of the Combat Threads newsletter, military collector, Olive Drab Daddy. Hey guys, how's it going? Good, Tom. How are you today? Good. Yeah, I'm hanging in there. I'm kind of like deep in, uh,
00:00:26
Speaker
in thesis writing mode right now. So this is kind of like a nice little break for me, honestly. Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, it's pretty rude. Yeah, I can imagine. Is the weather helping you spend some time just indoors doing your shit? Yeah, sure.
00:00:54
Speaker
It could really be any weather right now. Yeah. For the way I'm
NY Weather and Guest's Background
00:00:57
Speaker
feeling. I wish it was a little bit warmer. Obviously I'm up here in New York and it's kind of just been like a false winter all of a sudden. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like, like New York has not gotten nearly the amount of snow that you're going to expect in New York city. And so yeah. Yeah. It's like, it was so mild and all of a sudden it kind of like snapped a little bit and it's like, it's still not that bad, but
00:01:22
Speaker
Right, right. Just, you got that fall spring and now it's like, like tailwind of winter kind of bullshit. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Also known as March, which is the best month. We can agree to disagree on that, but I can feel it. I can feel it. So Charles, let's start at the beginning. So you said you're in New York now, but where are you from?
00:01:51
Speaker
Um, so I'm from, uh, like the upper west side of New York. Oh, okay. And right across the river, um, in Jersey too. So I kind of split my time growing up between those two places. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. And how old are you? Just out of curiosity, how old am I? I just turned 29. Sorry. Yeah. So like going to NYU being in the city is not really all that much different for you. Like, yeah. I mean, I graduated undergrad in 2016.
00:02:21
Speaker
um, came back down to the city. And yeah, I, you know, I was working, uh, come from kind of more of like a journalism background with like a little sprinkling of, you know, fashion stuff as well.
Impact of COVID-19 on Guest's Journey
00:02:33
Speaker
Um, and then COVID hit, lost my job, um, which was great, honestly. Um, it was a job that I didn't like very much. Um, and, uh, you know, I was like, well, that's really now or never as far as going to, going back to school and it kind of just all worked out.
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, and here I am, three years later, finishing up this program. That's fucking awesome, man. Congratulations. Yeah, yeah, thank you. I feel like we all know what it is like when a job is just like, yeah, this is ending and you're kind of like, okay, awesome. Thankfully. Yeah, I mean, it was like truly the best time to like lose one's job, right? Like kind of like right at like the height of COVID when like unemployment was at its like max, you know? Right. Being in New York already.
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, because I mean, I was working, I was working like an office job. So like I had, I had unemployment and New York was much easier to get unemployment in other States too, which was great. Sure. Um, so that really, you know, yeah, that was, it could have been a hell of a lot of work. That's for sure. Yeah.
Early Interest in Military Collecting
00:03:39
Speaker
And when and why did you start collecting military? Yeah. Um, Oh man. I mean, basically for as long as I can remember,
00:03:51
Speaker
is probably like the best answer. You know, when I was growing up, my parents, we would like drive around, like, you know, we'd go on like a road trip or whatever, go down South a little bit, go up North, whatever. And I kind of learned at a very young age, I couldn't read yet, but I knew that the cannon sign meant that there was a civil war battlefield nearby. So I would usually request a stop around that.
00:04:19
Speaker
And so that's, yeah, so it definitely started pretty early. My parents didn't really know what to do with me. I don't really come from kind of like a military background at all, as far as like family. And they were kind of just, you know, as weirded out as anybody else. They were trying to, yeah, they were kind of trying to figure that out, but they were totally supportive. And then around, I guess I was growing up and then, sorry, I'm kind of meandering a little bit.
00:04:49
Speaker
There was a surplus store in Patterson, New Jersey called S4 Surplus. And I started going there probably when I was, you know, again, probably around like seven or eight and, you know, became good friends with the owners. My parents did as well. And probably when I was around 12, they were like, hey, like there's this guy, I came in one day, there's this guy here and he does this thing called reenacting. You should talk to him. And yeah, so then I talked to this guy.
00:05:19
Speaker
He said there was this big reenactment at Fort Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania, right around my birthday. So we went out there and that's when I really started like collecting properly because you know, like any, like any good reenactment, there was a flea market involved as well. And so that's when I really started collecting. That's when I started getting into, you know, World War II in a really earnest way. And when I started reenacting as well. So it's right around that time. So do you still do reenactments?
00:05:47
Speaker
I do actually, yeah. I mean, it takes more of a form of research, honestly, like research and writing with the guys who I reenact with. I mean, COVID really hasn't helped with that either. We kind of like decided to take a little bit of like a sabbatical maybe the year before COVID and then COVID kind of just extended it longer. So really we've just been focusing a lot of our attention on researching and hitting the archives and yeah, kind of like that side of things.
00:06:17
Speaker
But yes, I still do do react. Yeah. Yeah. So like, when you started collecting that was, that was kind of like, in my experience, the tail end of the golden age of like surplus stores being insane.
Surplus Stores and WWII Surplus Abundance
00:06:31
Speaker
Like, you know, yeah. It's funny you say that because, you know, I've been doing a lot of research, obviously, for my thesis. And I came across this article recently from, I think it's like 1971.
00:06:44
Speaker
talking about how none of the surplus stores have any good stuff anymore. Oh, like, it really makes you think, right? Yeah. Um, you know, like grass grasses are always sucks. They're so lazy. You know, everybody's fucking lazy. Nobody wants to work anymore. Yeah. I mean, you know,
00:07:08
Speaker
It's really one of those things too where it's like, you know, it's so hard to wrap your head. I'm not really answering your question, sorry, but it's so hard to like wrap your head around like just the quantity of stuff that was surpassed after World War II. And, you know, subsequently, you know, it's just, you know, it's such an astronomical figure. You know, I, you know, I can actually tell you like right now here, one second. Yeah, play the clip. Sure.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I have this pulled up somewhere. No, no, we're pleased. Yeah, so like, you know, in February of 1946, this is just this is, you know, very soon after the war, they had already dumped $40 million worth of clothing. Holy shit. $40 and $40. Yeah. And like, remember, that's like, you know, that's also that's the
00:08:06
Speaker
that was the value to the government, not what they were being billed for. So, I mean, yeah, but yes, I mean, just an insane quantity of, an insane quantity of clothing, really. I mean, amongst other things, right? You know, from like trucks to, you know, medicine to false teeth to, you know, super eight film, you know, all this stuff, you know, it was just like dumped on the market beer too.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah, but so yeah, it was, but I get what you're saying there, right? You know, it definitely seems like, you know, kind of a more abundant time, but you know, the stuff is still out there. You can still go hunting for it. I'm sure if you know that, you know. I shop at a lot of surplus stores still, and like, there's plenty of shit still available. But when I was growing up, like buying clothes to pay PayPal in, it was like,
00:09:05
Speaker
you know, woodland camo or all Vietnam or earlier out of draft. And it's like, I wish I could go back in time to that, but there's still, like you said, so much shit that still comes out to the set. I'm gonna sound like such an old head right now, but like, I never thought I was gonna see the day when like OG107 stuff was like, you know, going over like 40 bucks. Oh, same here.
00:09:35
Speaker
Same here? Finding trousers in bigger sizes now, it's like, good luck. But when I was coming up, too, it's like 41 jackets. They weren't exactly easy to find, but they weren't hard either. They were out there. You were going to pay maybe $150. But yeah, now those things are getting rare and rare. But anyway, yeah. My new show of it all.
00:10:04
Speaker
That's what it's about. That's the point of the show. Yeah. Yeah, it totally is. Like this is, these are the conversations that we like to have on
Tracking Military Surplus Online
00:10:13
Speaker
here because it like, you know, it shows a different side of things than your regular connoisseur can like, can find on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, overall I'm like pretty critical of people who kind of like,
00:10:32
Speaker
go on and on about how like, how much better the old days were, or kind of how abundant certain things were. You know, when like, you know, the stuff is, you know, I don't know, I, it's, it's interesting, you know, I've become much more serious about like, you know, tracking down stuff and like, you know, really like constantly scanning, you know, eBay, Depop, Poshmark, like whatever, right. And like, just to kind of see like these kind of like little floods of, of products that kind of seem to like just congregate, you know, like,
00:11:01
Speaker
I've just noticed in the past like few weeks or maybe few months, like P44 jackets, like I've never seen so many hitting the market. And it's just like one of those weird things, right? Where it's like, this is just a little like bump. But it just goes to prove that this stuff is still out there and still changing hands. And, you know. And also the fact that like a lot of it isn't quote unquote rare. Like that's a word that I hate using.
00:11:28
Speaker
But a lot of these things were made in the millions, if not tens of millions. Yeah. Have been around for nearly 80 years, give or take. And so it's like, okay, this shit is still, is still changing hands. There's still plenty of it to be found. Yeah. I mean, if I remember correctly, I think like the stats on like the M43 field jacket, as far as like numbers produced by the end of the war, it's somewhere around like 17 million.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah, right. You know, it's, you know, I mean, speaking of another thing that's kind of gotten, you know, kind of harder to find in, uh, in different sizes and also just, you know, as the internet has totally reshaped the way people collect and the way people buy and what they look for, you know, like there's been a real like upswing, I think in people really caring about like the specs on the 43 jacket. And like, I, it can be attributed to like, you know, um, actually like a few of a few friends of mine who've done a lot of research on the 43 jacket published in like very,
00:12:26
Speaker
niche communities mostly reenacting about the different specs of the field jacket. But that's really changed the way people market the jackets they're selling and also the way people are buying them. So yeah, it's just, the stuff is always evolving. What do you remember your first like, quote unquote, real purchase being? Oh, yeah, sure.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this question and I was talking such a hard time just, you know, again, it's a whole life of collecting. But I would say that the first thing I like really remember like being like, I gotta have this thing. And, you know, I was lucky enough to get it from my parents got it for me was a, like a real relic. It was a, if I remember correctly, it was like a revolutionary war, like musket.
00:13:22
Speaker
Basically like completely like rusted and pitted out like it was recovered. I think probably from the bottom of a lake or something. And I still have that thing somewhere. But it's like, you know, it was a wall piece. But that was like the first like, you know, This is the, this is the first thing I, you know, I really remember being like, you know, this is the thing I gotta have.
00:13:42
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I had a weird relationship with military when I was a boy too. Um, and I was just kind of finding like stuff in the thrift store. And if it was like all of drab, then I was buying it. You know, I didn't have a super sophisticated understanding of it when I was like a boy or whatever, but it was really formative.
00:14:07
Speaker
I think I had like an olive drab T-shirt that I would like try to wear over and over again. And my mom was like, you can't wear it every day. And I was like, but the men in black have a uniform and this is simply my uniform. It didn't work. Yeah. I mean, it's, I feel like, you know, I was collecting from a really young age, but that stuff didn't really kind of start to like enter my personal style until like,
00:14:36
Speaker
I guess probably like really until like high school. Yeah, I mean, I was kind of like a, you know, as far as like, you know, my own personal style, I really didn't really like hit until high school, which I guess is probably the same for most people. But that's kind of when I started to like, you know, bring some of that stuff that I was collecting kind of into my wardrobe. Yeah. I really liked grunge. And so in my like attempts to Abe Kurt Cobain, like,
00:15:06
Speaker
I had like a woodland camo field jacket and I had this like pink terrycloth cardigan that I wore, you know. It's about the wearing pink and camo together. Like that I think is a good aesthetic. Yeah, I literally just bought a pink shirt recently for the first time in a long time with that very kind of same thought in my head of like, oh yeah, this looked really good with a lot of my olive drab.
00:15:35
Speaker
And it does, it does. I was always told that I can't have pink skin and wear the color pink. I made it different. I've been doing it recently and I think that it's fine. So I was going to ask you to kind of provide a little superstructure to the discussion.
Post-WWII Transition of Military Clothing
00:15:56
Speaker
If you could run through briefly
00:16:00
Speaker
the modern American military civilian clothing complex, which you talk about, I guess, in a lot of your work. Yeah, I mean, that's very much at the heart of what my thesis is, what my thesis will be discussing. But yeah, I mean, for the sake of this conversation, let's start this conversation.
00:16:24
Speaker
in World War II, right? I mean, I think one can make arguments for going back further, but as far as my research is concerned, that's where it starts. And really, immediately after World War II, kind of per our conversation we were just having, there's a heck of a lot of stuff on the market that's being dumped into the market. Surplus stores basically just sprout up overnight. And all of a sudden, all this clothing is available
00:16:53
Speaker
the civilian population. And you see it like really immediately entering what I would call in a more kind of popular fashion or kind of just the things that people on the street wear, right? Not high fashion, right? The thing that the masks wear, right? Sure. And you see it like, yeah, basically right away, mostly on college campuses, mostly on the backs of veterans who have returned from the war and are now taking advantage of the GI Bill,
00:17:23
Speaker
which, you know, for our listeners, if they don't know, you know, it's one of the largest expansions of, you know, actually probably the largest expansion of higher education benefits in this country. It really enabled a whole generation of young people to go to college. And that basically, you know, the government's paying for veterans to go to school right after World War II. And you see a lot of them wearing pieces of their uniform.
00:17:47
Speaker
Then through the 1950s into the early 1960s, it kind of recedes into a little bit more of both a working class uniform. A lot of fishermen and sportsmen are wearing surplus. A lot of more industrial laborers are wearing surplus. And then also still college students. College students hitting the local surplus store looking for
00:18:16
Speaker
for fun stuff to wear, basically. In that period, it's actually on the college side. It's mostly women who are wearing a lot more surplus than men, at least in popular media recording. And then into the late 1960s into the early 1970s, you see a lot of military surplus adopted by different counterculture movements as part of their everyday uniform or part of their personal style.
00:18:44
Speaker
Um, and this, you know, I think it's linked to a few different things. I think something that, you know, kind of overlooks sometimes with that is, you know, it really is, you know, trying to opt out of, you know, the kind of the capitalist consumer culture of the U S in the 1960s. Right. You know, really like taking, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like kind of like taking yourself out of the world of fashion, right. Um, or, you know, consumerism.
00:19:08
Speaker
And then basically starting into the 1980s, it kind of goes a little bit more mainstream. Brands like Banana Republic, starting in the 1980s, they really bring surplus to a more yuppie class of consumer. Yeah, and that's the span of my research really on this topic. So I hope that kind of gives you a little overview and we can get into whatever you want.
00:19:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that was fantastic. That was like, that was exactly what we were looking for. So the next thing that I would get into is your piece for standardandstrange.com about military influence on American collegiate style. I will say the first thing that really, really stuck out to me was as we have discussed a little bit, the post war clothing shortage.
00:20:04
Speaker
which when you are hearing about post-war America, you're hearing about prosperity, you're hearing about abundance, you're hearing about like, everyone has a car, everyone has a few cars, whatever. And that doesn't really seem to be true, or at least in some places. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just one of these kind of, you know, if any student of history, like what kind of like find these kind of small things that, you know,
00:20:34
Speaker
these things that kind of get lost to time, right? You know, like the period of the clothing shortage was very short, you know, kind of in the sweep of things, right? Kind of really comes right as World War II is ending. And basically like, you know, it was over by, I want to say like, you know, mid 1946, right? Like, you know, it's not- So it was super short. Yeah, it's basically like, you know, a year, maybe a little less, right? But it's a year when, you know,
00:21:03
Speaker
you have to remember there's about 12 million men in uniform, right? Americans in uniform, and they're all coming back from World War II at basically the same time. And the clothing industry had been obviously geared towards the war effort, right? So there were plans being made for this readjustment, right? We need to have more civilian clothing, but basically the demand outstripped
00:21:30
Speaker
you know, the supply. And it's kind of like as simple as that. I mean, there's a little bit more to it. I'm working on something that's going to, you know, with a good friend of mine that will kind of dive a little bit more into that research. But I mean, that, that's kind of the broad strokes on it, right? It's this very, very brief window when, you know, GIs are coming home and they can't get any clothes, right? Specifically a white shirt, like a white shirt is kind of talked about a lot in
00:21:57
Speaker
newspaper reporting on it. Bob Hope has like a little, you know, a little quip about it. You know, kind of, it's totally in the mainstream. There's, you know, shirtless protests happening in cities, you know, like, wow, that's wild. That's like not, I don't know. I mean, this, this sure, it's like, it's not like people are starving, but still it's like, I don't know. That's significant. If there are a bunch of people in 1944, 1945 walking around without their shirts on in public in America,
00:22:28
Speaker
Huh.
Veterans' Campus Life Post-War
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah. And so it kind of like led to this, you know, it led to kind of, you know, some returning servicemen kind of turning to their old uniforms and making adjustments to them and changing them to kind of, you know, make them more geared towards civilian life. So, you know, I think you also have to think of the psychological reasons behind it. Right. So, you know, when you were discharged from the service, you basically could wear your uniform officially for 30 days. Right. That was kind of the
00:22:57
Speaker
the law, it wasn't enforced, but that was kind of the idea. You had 30 days to get some clothes. But some of these people had been in uniform for three years. But the last thing they want to do is continue to wear the same thing. And unlike today, this is not a professional army where it's like, this is people's careers. These are people who kind of stopped their life
00:23:25
Speaker
you know, either were drafted or volunteered. And, you know, we're basically forced into a very rigid structure that they didn't really want to be part of. And, you know, that doesn't say anything about, you know, if they were happy to do it or not, right? There's something about the politics of it. It's just a fact that, you know, we're all individuals and we usually don't want to be put into a box where that individuality is like rubbed out, right? So the last thing you want to do when you return home is just continue to wear the same olive drab
00:23:54
Speaker
stuff even works for three years. Right, right. You're trying to break the uniform. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which is like, I don't know, I guess it's only natural. Another quote that I pulled from that piece from Bard's Emily Post, which I think is really nice, Bard's Emily Post in 1946 wrote,
00:24:20
Speaker
Quote, there is no need for buying your clothes at Brooks Brothers since the garments you slept in while serving your country are adequate. That seems pretty mean at the least. Pretty not empathetic. And so this, I mean, a little bit like the clothing shortage, it runs counter to the, I don't know, the status quo, the common knowledge about
00:24:50
Speaker
that period of time. So I'm amazed that someone would put that kind of thing in writing in 1946. Like, what do you mean? These guys just fucking, like, a lot of them just died. And so what does it matter what they are wearing, right? Yeah, I totally go. Yeah, I get what you're saying for sure. I mean, this is really important. This quote for me was really important because I went to Bard. Oh, nice.
00:25:18
Speaker
some research that was very close to home for me and very important for my research. But I've mulled over this quote a lot. And I'm trying to, again, this is a college newspaper. I think that's a really important thing to say from the jump. So I don't know if any of you guys worked on college newspapers. I did. The editing process is not exactly rigorous sometimes.
00:25:48
Speaker
And so I've kind of, you know, I've kind of read the sentence as like, is she saying like the garments you slept in while serving your country, meaning like you didn't do anything but sleep while you were in the army? Or is she saying it like the clothes that you just slept in, that you woke up in and that happened to be the clothes you wore while you were in the army? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like I can't tell if it's more of a comment about just like the state of the clothes and kind of the slovenliness of the student today.
00:26:17
Speaker
Or if it's kind of this more like, you know, oh, you didn't do anything overseas type comment. I don't really know where I kind of land on kind of the side of saying like, you know, this is more of a reflection on kind of the slovenliness of the of the male student that you're saying.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I hope that kind of answers your question. Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. Is it satirical? Because that is actually very funny, you piece of shit at Okinawa. What are you doing? Lazy bum. Yeah, I mean, the whole piece in whole, which I think I sent over to you guys before you can read it, it definitely has a satirical tilt to it.
00:27:06
Speaker
But I think it's, you know, it's also a reflection of this kind of broader, you know, kind of culture war to use like a, you know, a modern parlance that was kind of like bubbling up at the time to between mostly like, you know, so during the war years, right? You know, there's not a lot of men going to college, right? There are women continue to go to college, obviously. So the freshmen classes who are coming in, you know, they're basically made up of,
00:27:35
Speaker
you know, fresh faced like 18 year old, you know, boys and girls who just graduated from high school alongside a bunch of, you know, slightly older men who were just overseas, right? So there kind of is this kind of weird culture clash that you see pop up in a lot of college newspapers, a lot of college yearbooks from 1946, 1947, where, you know, the younger students are kind of saying like, this isn't the college experience that I signed up for because
00:28:02
Speaker
none of these older veterans are willing to play the games the way we want to play them. They're not going to wear a dunce cap. They're not going to get hazed to join a fraternity. They're not going to take kindly to having to wait in line at the registrar's office for two hours to sign up for classes. And they're not going to go to pep rallies. These kind of more raw, raw, collegiate type things that we would think about with a Doris Day movie on college campus kind of thing.
00:28:32
Speaker
That's not really these guys at speed, right? You know, a lot of these veterans who are going to school, they are really, they're seeing this as, you know, basically a way to a more financially lucrative future, you know, to really securing their place in the middle class. And a lot of them are already married and, you know, they might be coming to school with kids, right? So it kind of, you know, led to kind of, you know, a little bit of a strange environment on college campuses where there was a little bit of a push and pull there.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds a little strained, I mean. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's some interesting news reports, too, from the 1960s where Ty talks about Vietnam vets going to college after their tour of duty. And it just kind of basically them just kind of melting into the populace of universities and not trying to stand out in any way. And this is quite the opposite in 1945, 1946, where
00:29:33
Speaker
the veterans are forming very tight clicks and are very, I mean, back to kind of our subject at hand, they're wearing the clothes that they just wore. There's some great photos of guys wearing their A2 bomber jackets that quite literally have the number of missions they flew painted on them, or the number of planes shot down inscribed on these leather jackets. These guys aren't, they're not your typical freshmen college students.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah. And the pictures in that article that you found are awesome as well. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Connor and I, when we were kind of preparing for this, like talked a little bit about how a lot of returning vets, like starting the Motor Talk Club lifestyle and like, you know, just, just hearing the fact that they were, they were just kind of like,
00:30:32
Speaker
keeping it themselves through your research. I don't know, it just redefines that. They were wearing the shit they had because they had a hard time adjusting to normal life after that. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I don't know how far I would go with the argument off my cuff. But I do think that there's definitely something to that.
00:31:02
Speaker
You know, something I came across again and again in my in my research was kind of this strange relationship between the kind of, you know, the younger classmates and their older peers and kind of coming across just like in this Emily Post, you know, the bars in the post column, you know, very much like that. Right. Like really kind of just like complaining about the state of veterans on campus, you know, kind of how
00:31:26
Speaker
How annoying they are. So that kind of leads into something else we noticed in your research was talking about soldiers modifying their uniforms to like adapt back. First of all, I guess, how did you find this info? And can you share some examples of what was regarded as something they should do?
00:31:57
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think I probably heard it for the first time, you know, kind of with the guys who, who I reenact with, we do a, we do a hundredth infantry division, um, us. Um, and you know, we've done a lot of, um, we, we knew a lot of the veterans. We still do know a lot of the veterans. Unfortunately, there's not as many of them as, uh, there once was, and we've done a lot of interviews, um, with them. And I think the first time I kind of heard of like dying.
00:32:22
Speaker
you know, a piece of uniform after the war to wear was in one of these interviews. And it kind of was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. I kind of stuck in the back of the head. And then over the years, you know, I've kind of seen here and there, like, you know, on eBay or just like at the flea market, you know, a dyed, like, you know, a jacket, a dyed, you know, wool shirt. And then I think what really like cracked it open for me was when I was working on, on this thesis research and
00:32:51
Speaker
I found an article from the Columbia Spectator, so the Columbia University Daily Newspaper, and that mentioned it in an article. Basically, you know, this kind of really rich article about kind of how you can modify your, you know, your military duds to, you know, kind of, just looking in there. Thank you. Just trying to stay on message.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah, changing these military duds into more acceptable versions of civilian clothing. And one of the key ways is dyeing your stuff. And it lays out what colors make sense for what. And then, again, through just more digging and digging, you see newspaper advertisements for
00:33:46
Speaker
Professional dry cleaners or laundries offering their services to dye your uniform You know saying like we will die, you know, we'll dye your old uniforms These are the colors you can choose from like, you know, come on by and drop them off So that's kind of like where that like, you know, how I that the journey of that research, right? And and there's more on that to come Which I'm kind of excited about which hopefully in the next year I'll have something more just to share with you again doing some research with a close friend of mine on this and
00:34:16
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so that was a big thing was just like, yeah. So your wool pants, your wool shirt, dye those things like blue or like bottle green. So like, kind of like, you know, that like rich Heineken, you know, glass green. Um, it's a big one. Uh, you know, it was like, take kind of the brass buttons off your, you know, officer's Navy coat, you know, and add. You know, kind of more subdued buttons to make it kind of more into like a double breasted coat.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah, these are these kind of like little hacks. I mean, you see, you know, the overcoats, you know, turned into single breasted, you know, double. Again, these kind of like little things that you can do just to tweak them just a little bit to make them kind of more in line with the fashion of the day instead of the uniform, you know.
00:35:07
Speaker
Sure, yeah. I mean, so the next question that I have is about your research ability, research prowess, what have you. It is excellent. It's really good. I mean, the work that you do is awesome. That article where you found the shirt and you found the guy, like, holy shit. Yeah, that's extremely cool and very good. I mean, something that didn't make it into that article is that I found a guy who had more of his shirts and a jacket. Oh, yes.
00:35:37
Speaker
which was really like, like quite amazing that I found another collector who had posted about this guy's stuff. And so that was kind of, you know, yeah, I kind of found that kind of right as I was publishing and I was like, that's really cool. I don't know how to work in it, but it's cool that I found that. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to put you on the spot. Like what a process like, do you have any tips for anyone, you know?
Researching Military Clothing History
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I promise I'm not like,
00:36:07
Speaker
you know, feigning humility here, but like it is really not that hard. I'd say like the number one thing that's like, it's gonna sound so silly is like when you're searching on Google, when you're searching anywhere, use quotation marks. Like that's like number, that's like, you know, research 101 is like use quotation marks. That's some Boolean search operators. So, but you know, yeah, I mean,
00:36:39
Speaker
It just, you know, honestly, it just takes a long time of just like, kind of like figure it out and like just plugging away at it. It's like so second nature for me at this point. It is kind of hard to like, kind of like talk through the process. I mean, you know, I always start with, um, you know, if I get, you know, an article of clothing that I want to like find something out about it, right? Like, you know,
00:37:01
Speaker
turn all the pockets inside out, you know, like see if there's like anything anywhere that has any kind of identification on it. Any clues? Yeah, exactly. Like I actually, you know, I found this like really neat, um, modified, um, like, you know, reversible, uh, like ski parka, right? So like these us army, you know, attributed mostly to the 10th mountain division, these, you know, these reversible ski parkas, right? With like a fur hood. And
00:37:30
Speaker
you know, someone had taken it and added basically like embroidered ribbon work all over the white side and then had cut it in half and add a full zip. So it went from being a smock pullover to like being a full zip jacket, right? And I was like, man, this is so weird and interesting on this, but you know, it's just good to have, you know, and I got it and I just like turned the pockets inside out and the woman had stitched her name into the inside.
00:37:59
Speaker
you know, and like from there, you know, I got, you know, I found her obituary, you know, and then from there, you know, was able to just like, you know, dig a little bit more, dig a little bit more. And, you know, was able to find a lot that way, honestly. So looking is good and looking specifically and carefully is good. Yeah. And then the other thing I'd say too is like, you know, like not every garment needs to be fully researched, you know, like, no, I guess,
00:38:28
Speaker
Like I think mostly in like the vintage military like world, sometimes you can get the, you know, people are like, Oh, like this garment, this garment has so much history to it. Like there's so much going on here. And it's like, you know, it probably just sat in the bottom of a bag for 50 years and then someone pulled it out and it got donated to Salvation Army. And that's the history, you know, and like that, you know, it's fine, you know, but like, it's just, I think sometimes, you know, we can ascribe like too much meaning.
00:38:56
Speaker
to some of these garments or like, oh, do you see that stain? That could be blood. It's never blood. It's rust. It's never blood. Anything that got blood on it, that thing got thrown away in a military context. That stuff was never getting back home. So I think sometimes we can ascribe too much. And it's like, if all the clues are there, then go for it. I really lucked out with that shirt. It had the name tape on it.
00:39:25
Speaker
the unit patch on it, like with a unit patch and a name tape, like you're in business, right? Like you can, you can find anything, you know, and like, even like with world war two stuff, right? You know, if it has a laundry number on it, you can maybe, you can maybe get there, right? So the laundry number in like the U S army, right? It would be your last initial followed by the last four of your, uh, serial number. Right. And if you just like, you can find it, there's, there's a, um, there's like a website, basically a database that you can just like plug in the last four.
00:39:56
Speaker
of a serial number. And you can just see everybody else who had that. You can see all of the serial numbers, right? And you can just see, you know, all right, well, there's 12 people with the last letter M and these last four serial numbers, right? These last four digits. And you can try to narrow it down from there. But again, it's like, you know, the clothes are gonna guide you as far as it can go, you know? Hmm.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I would maybe be curious about those sites, I guess, like not in the moment, but we can put them out for people. Because I'm sure people have stuff that have identifying information in them. Maybe they too want to find out who the previous owner was.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah. And like, you know, again, like unfortunately in our world, right. It's like a lot of these things, they're behind paywalls. Right. Right. Right. You know, like, I'm really lucky that, you know, I'm, I'm connected to an institution, NYU, that, you know, allows me access to newspaper archives. Right. Or like, you know, there's these like ancestry. Right. Right. Right. So you can search obituaries and stuff. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Or like, you know, ancestry.com has this, like the sister site called Fold3.
00:41:21
Speaker
which is all military records, right? That they've digitized. And they're digitizing military records at an insanely fast pace. And they're doing it for the government, basically to digitize them for the government, right? But they're putting them behind this massive paywall that makes them incredibly hard to access. And NYU as an institution, they don't even have access to it. I have to like- So who is it for them?
00:41:48
Speaker
It's for like independent researchers, you know, like genealogy people. Yeah, it's for the, you know, Fox News quarter buyer, silver quarter buyers. Yeah. Or like, you know, like, you know, I have friends that, you know, that have, you know, that have spent the money to like have access to that, you know, and I'm able to, like, thankfully I'm able to, you know, borrow those credentials, right? But, you know, if not, it's like, all right, I guess I gotta pay $500 a year for,
00:42:15
Speaker
this Fold3 thing, right? I don't know if it's actually $500 a year, but it's a lot. But yeah, I mean, it's a drag. But there's still ways out there. I encourage everybody to hit the archives. Chances are you're close to a branch of the National Archives. The most relevant ones for finding people, or the most relevant one would be the one in St. Louis.
00:42:45
Speaker
And you can find researchers who can do work for you there that aren't incredibly expensive. But stuff is out there, man. I'll keep on returning to that. So what have you collected over the years to your top three favorite things?
Guest's Favorite Collected Items
00:43:10
Speaker
top three favorite things like in my collection. You don't necessarily need to add them. I will say, but. Honestly, I think three and three, like top three pieces overall and top three things that you have. Okay, sure. All right. No particular order. I'll do for the things in my like, in my closet or in my, my archive as I, as I like to call it, or my, my giant Z rack that I have.
00:43:41
Speaker
Um, so I got this, um, this World War II tanker jacket, um, on Facebook marketplace, um, from this guy down in Texas. And it was his, I believe it was his stepfather's and it came with, um,
00:43:57
Speaker
It came with a book that he was mentioned in with his autograph on it. And he basically, you know, he was a Sherman tank commander in Normandy, was almost awarded, was, I mean, he was, he was awarded, I believe, the silver star for his actions during that campaign, one particular battle where he was, he was wounded quite badly. And that was like a kind of a really cool piece of history to kind of get my hands on. And, you know, I mean,
00:44:23
Speaker
At first I was kind of into it just because it was a tanker jacket, kind of before I knew the story on it, you know, but then it kind of, the story kind of overwhelmed it. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I love the way you can put a face to a name. Yeah, I mean, it was just such a unique, like, experience to like, be able to, you know, buy this from a relative. And like, you know, really, you know, like, that's kind of things like,
00:44:48
Speaker
unless I'm like not making rent, you know, like that's staying in the collection, right? But two other things actually that I'm gonna say are actually things that I no longer have in my collection that I've had since sold, which like I do quite a bit, not like, you know, on a professional level at all, but you know, as just kind of a, as a side thing. One of them is a, was a woman's dress made out of camouflage parachute nylon. Oh, that's so cool.
00:45:17
Speaker
So it was a very 1950s, early 1960s style dress made from that kind of very distinctive camouflage nylon material. So a lot of people call it silk, it's not silk, it's nylon. And that was quite a cool thing to grab. And then, oh yeah, and the other thing was, this was kind of like one of my first like really big scores, you know, was that I found a,
00:45:47
Speaker
a pair of unreinforced 1942 jump trousers on Depop of all places for very little, basically. And that was quite a cool find. Yeah, those are like the top three things I feel like that I've done in my collection. Yeah, what was the other question? I'm sorry.
00:46:14
Speaker
what's your kind of like top three designs military wise that you've come across? Oh, sure. I'm kind of a loaded question, I understand. Yeah, yeah, no, it's fine. I mean, I'm very partial to, it's not really my area of research so much, but British Army combat smocks. So kind of like the ones like from like the immediate post war period. I mean, really, honestly, I can tell today, I have most of them.
00:46:44
Speaker
Um, but there's this kind of something just like, you know, slightly more, um, Sartorial one could say, um, then like the U S style of, um, a field jacket, you know, like the pockets are, I'm sorry, you cut out there and hear you. It's like dashing. I think it's very, it's very sort of sporting.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah. And like, you have that huge game pocket in the back too, you know, kind of like adding to like, kind of the sportingness of it all. Right. And, you know, I just, you know, I also just love like British camos too. DPM and MTP, you know, probably, you know, some of my top, top camos. So very partial to that. I think, I think the M51 field jacket is kind of like the unsung, you know,
00:47:44
Speaker
best field jacket. I would agree with you. Yeah. It kind of like, you know, the M43 obviously it's very special to me, but the M51 basically takes away kind of all of the things from the M43 that, you know, we're just not quite practical. Like basically, you know, the open lapel, you know, like the collar that lays flat, like a, like a suit jacket, right? Yeah. You know, and, you know, adds the zip to, you know, and just like kind of, you know,
00:48:14
Speaker
these are kind of little things. And then, you know, it doesn't also have the kind of awful design features of the M65, which I think is honestly, it's not a great jacket. But yeah. What have you heard about the M65? Yeah, why not? You know, you got it. You say you got it. I mean, I think just, you know, the, the, the stand, like the stand up collar with the hood is like, just not very flattering. I mean, again, I'm talking from, you know,
00:48:40
Speaker
It looks good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but I will say that like the cuffs, the cuffs make no, make no damn sense. Okay. You know, like the kind of fold back Velcro cuff, right? You know, it's just like, I, those things are like always getting in the way. They don't really make any sense. It really should just be like a button cuff, like the M51, you know, or like I've seen a few modified, like with like a wooly cuff, you know, like with like a, yeah, I gathered wool, you know, uh, like a sock top, you know, um,
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah. And, um, yeah. So yeah, I don't love the M 65. And then as far as like, you know, uh, what else man, that's two. Oh man. I might just need to call it with that. Honestly. Five things is a lot. Um, you know, yeah, I love HBT as much as the next guy, you know?
00:49:37
Speaker
But one of the best fabrics, even though it's not the, not the strongest for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, the way, especially on like, you know, on old HBT, you know, like not like reproduction stuff, just the way the 12 pops, you know, from the repeated washing, you know, just like, it looks great. And those things are so over, and it's one of these examples too of something that's like, those jackets were so oversized.
00:50:05
Speaker
that you can just like still find them so abundantly now in like most people sizes, right? Like, you know, I'm like a, you know, I'm like a 43 regular and I can wear like a 38 in that like all day, you know? So, you know, it's one of those things you can just still find quite a bit of.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess we can wrap up. We are going to ask the White Whale question, which I think is a good one.
Grail Culture in Collecting
00:50:35
Speaker
Is there something that you are seeking all of the time that escapes you? You don't have to reveal it if you don't want to reveal it to our listeners, but
00:50:47
Speaker
You know, it's funny. It's like a very good friend of mine is Sean Crowley of Crowley Vintage. He's actually my next door neighbor here in Brooklyn. And we talk about this kind of all the time, which is kind of like, you know, you're not calling it grail culture, but like, you know, it is kind of like, you know, the grails, right? And how just like, it's just so not the way like we collect stuff, you know, like, it's just,
00:51:14
Speaker
I don't know. It's kind of such a hard question for you. Is there something that you can't find, like something that you're searching for all the time that you can't find in your size, in the color that you want? Honestly, no. I guess I kind of just see myself in the collecting world like a fisherman. Whatever's in the catch of the day, that's the catch of the day.
00:51:39
Speaker
you know, and like, you know, if it's out there, it's out there. If it's not, it's not. And I know it's kind of a shitty answer. No, I don't think so at all. I mean, I'll ask you, what do you wear on a daily basis that is surplus, that is military?
Guest's Fashion and Social Media
00:51:54
Speaker
I mean, I basically wear like one thing as military basically every day. Which, yeah, like when I was actually when I was moving into this current apartment, like I was like bringing up my
00:52:05
Speaker
my clothes onto the stoop and someone yelled at me from across the street and was like, I really hope you were in the military because that's way too much military stuff. We didn't even touch on the stolen valor question. What I wear mostly though is I have a few pairs of HPTs that I cycle through quite a bit.
00:52:31
Speaker
unlike a lot of other people kind of in this world, like I'm also very open to reproductions. I think that's because, you know, I come from a reenacting background. So, you know, I have like a few, like, you know, a Repro B10 that I love wearing. You know, I wear an M51 a lot. I have a great, like, you know, one of those, I wear like some modern stuff too. Like the British kind of, the British military like down jacket that they issue now is like the warmest jacket I've ever owned.
00:53:00
Speaker
And it's just like go, you know, it's just a camel colored, you know, high loft down jacket that can like, you know, be packed into a ball. And it's, you know, I wear that thing like basically every day. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I kind of, I dabble kind of, you know, all time periods. Um, probably the oldest thing I wear on like a, like a semi regular basis, or at least like would wear it out of the house. No problem is I have like a, um, I have like a world war.
00:53:29
Speaker
probably an early World War II hate belt that I'll sometimes wear. So it's kind of like a very thick leather belt with different British regiment cap badges pressed into them. And I'll wear that every once in a while. Oh, that sounds awesome.
00:53:49
Speaker
Yeah. Sounds like the, it sounds like the archive is, has some stuff in it, which I would not call grail material as per your request, but it sounds like you have some nice shit, my friend. Yeah. Yeah. And I can, yeah, I can send you guys some pictures and you can kind of see some of the stuff. We would be happy to post it if you were willing. Yeah. I mean, I'm not awesome. I don't, I don't really.
00:54:15
Speaker
care about, like, you know, keeping things out of, out of view. You know, yeah, that's definitely not my, not my style. Yeah. I don't know. You guys have anything else or is that kind of, are we there? I think, I think we're there. Charles, thank you for coming on. We always like to get the guests a chance to shout out whenever they want to shout out. So Kevin,
00:54:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, you can follow my work at combat threads on Instagram. And do, and do follow the work. Yeah, it's a great resource and just generally interesting if you're in the military. Thank you. Yeah, I mean- I would say it'd be interesting to a normal person. Oh, totally. A non-freak person who is obsessed with camouflage. You would be compelled by this, because it's culture.
00:55:10
Speaker
Yeah. And like, that's totally like, you know, what I'm, you know, what I'm going for. Right. And like, that's like, kind of like the, the crossroads of my, my research, right. It's like that popular culture in military uniforms. And, you know, I'd say like, you know, yeah, if you're like someone who's not like super into military stuff, start with the, uh, the desert storm, uh, merch. Uh, you know, like that's like a really weird one that like, I spent a lot of time researching and, you know, I think it was really interesting and just super weird. Um,
00:55:38
Speaker
And yeah, so yeah, you can, you can follow my work there. It's on sub stack to combat threads. Um, yeah, that that's what I would plug. There we go. Uh, we are at apocalypse studs on Instagram, apocalypse studs at gmo.com. If you listen to this and enjoy, uh, please grab us on Spotify so we can get
00:56:05
Speaker
whatever we can get Connor knows that shit I don't know Charles whatever award they give you a little star they give you yeah that's that's gonna start but Charles thank you again uh yeah coming on and this was have a fun this is great thank you so much it's yeah yeah again it's really nice to kind of step away from from thesis work to kind of just have a chat nice well good luck to you on your thesis here thank you
00:56:32
Speaker
I am Matt Smith at Rebels Rogues on Instagram. And I'm Connor Fowler at Connor Fowler. And yeah, thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.