Fashion, Military Influences on
Fashion, Military Influences on.American fashion has recruited military style again and again, recognizing the efficacy of military specifications and the charisma of heroic accomplishment. Virtually every factor of the military has been employed in civilian fashion sooner or later, including epaulets, ball buttons, khaki adapted from the British military in India, and olive drab. Special sartorial heroes have included A‐2 aviators' leather jackets, navy blue as a standard of modern dress, sailors' drop‐front bell‐bottom trousers, pea jackets, knit sweaters of sailors and commandos, aviator glasses, and camouflage appropriated to daily use. When the late‐twentieth‐century fashion editor Diana Vreeland called uniforms “the sportswear of the nineteenth century,” she was describing useful adaptations: examples of the cavalry to riding apparel, braid as reinforcement and decoration, plastrons and double‐breasted chests as double protection for the...
[The entire page is 864 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
