Gear: Chapter 4

Summary

Podcast Summary: Articles of Interest — “Gear: Chapter 4”

Host: Avery Trufelman
Guests: Ray Christian, Patricia Ziegler, Jasper Craven, Charles McFarlane, Rachel S. Gross, Carl Goldberg, Bing Dong Duan, Logan McGrath
Date: November 12, 2025

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Overview

This episode of “Articles of Interest” delves into the unlikely journey of military surplus gear from utilitarian army issue to countercultural statement to mainstream fashion. Through voices of veterans, historians, and former boutique owners, host Avery Trufelman explores the social, political, and aesthetic evolution of the iconic field jacket—particularly the M65—and how army surplus encapsulated American identity, aspiration, protest, and consumerism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Life in the Infantry & the Allure of Military Service

[00:00–08:19]

• Ray Christian’s Army Experience: Ray, a former infantryman and drill sergeant, recounts how he joined the Army at 17. It was more about finding stability and opportunity than patriotism:
  • “The military regularly made sure that you had three meals always...I never ate like that ever.” (Ray, [03:37])
  • Learning middle-class habits: “It’s these little details of what the rest of the world held as standards of behavior. Life that [I] didn’t even know existed. One of them was sheets...changing sheets every week, mind blown.” (Ray, [04:38])
• Social Advancement over Patriotism: For Ray and many of his peers from blue-collar backgrounds, the motivations to enlist centered on material benefits, respect, and “leapfrogging into the middle class,” rather than high-minded patriotism.
• Political Tension over Service: Ray argues that restricting groups like Black people, women, and later LGBTQ individuals from serving was rooted in denying their claim to full citizenship and social respect:
  • “If they serve, they’re going to say we contributed to society. So that’s the motivation for keeping them out.” (Ray, [06:14])

The Grunt’s Realities and Aspirations

[08:20–11:08]

• Tedious Work: Ray humorously details the often menial, morale-sapping side of Army life (like cleaning garbage cans), and the constant “bitching and complaining” among privates.
• Combat Curiosity: Despite the drudgery, Ray admits young soldiers often yearned for combat for career advancement or to prove themselves:
  • “When I was in, it is all I wanted.” (Ray, [09:03])
• Cultural Legacy & Disillusionment: Ray reflects on contradictory messages he received: pride in Black service from WWII-era photos, but Vietnam veterans’ warnings and broader skepticism from his own community.

Surplus Gear as Fashion & Protest

[11:22–26:15]

• Army Jackets Become Countercultural: After Vietnam, army field jackets (like the M65) became common attire for civilians, notably anti-war activists. Jasper Craven and Charles McFarlane note that counterculture didn’t hide the clothing’s military origin—instead, they “enjoyed actively messing with the symbolism.”
  • 1960s field jackets with peace signs became powerful, visible contradictions.
• Mainstream Reaction: The mainstream military was unsettled by this adoption; soldiers returning from Vietnam found themselves objects of protest, not reverence.

From Surplus Stores to Boutiques

[28:50–36:09]

• Surplus Goes Upscale: Carl Goldberg and Patricia Ziegler describe how surplus stores pivoted to fashion by importing/dyeing stock and “zhuzh[ing]” up classic models. Patricia and her husband Mel turned this into the Banana Republic boutique—rebranding militaria as adventure/safari gear.
  • “We could actually sell the same pieces for a lot more if we added style.” (Patricia, [30:33])
• Birth of Banana Republic: Their playful, irreverent approach—turning army shirts into dresses, gas mask bags into purses, decorating their store like a safari—caught on, becoming a retail phenomenon and an early template for lifestyle branding.

The Surplus Boom Dwindles

[43:03–48:25]

• Surplus Runs Out: Both surplus entrepreneurs and collectors realized that dwindling wars and shrinking militaries (especially with the end of the draft and demilitarization in Europe) meant surplus supplies were finite.
  • “I knew that surplus was going to run out. It wasn’t going to last.” (Patricia, [44:12])
  • This led to sourcing/manufacturing new versions of classic surplus, often for mainstream brands.
• Banana Republic's Transformation: After acquisition by the Gap, the original playful and adventure-focused Banana Republic shifted toward mass-market khakis; Mel and Patricia left, and the chain lost much of its early character.

The Modern Surplus Store & Knockoff Gear

[48:25–51:14]

• Scarcity & Authenticity: Surplus dealer Logan McGrath recounts that today, most stores sell imitation surplus—cheap, army-style clothes with no real military provenance:
  • “That’s what most surplus stores look like nowadays. Just like this, full of cheap surplus things, and people buy it just maybe for cheap.” (Bing Dong Duan, [50:49])
• Pivot to New Manufacturing: With dwindling authentic stock, many businesses (and collectors like Bing Dong) now turn to reproducing the look and feel of vintage military gear.
• Modern Geopolitics: Some European countries now hoard surplus in case of actual military need (“You’ll see surplus Kevlar helmets and body armor...in use with the Ukrainians...better to have something old than not have anything at all.” — Logan, [49:26])

Legacy & Symbolic Evolution

[25:59–26:15], [35:13–36:09]

• Symbol Control Lost: When veterans donned their jackets in anti-war protests, “the US Military lost control of their own symbolism.” (Avery, [26:12])
• From Radical to Mainstream: What began as a rebellion eventually became just another style, as seen in 1970s films and by the “yuppification” of military surplus.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ray Christian on Joining Up:
  • “That’s the ticket punch for those of us who don’t go to college. So it’s a start for those of us who come from that background...” ([05:06])
• On the Countercultural Takeover:
  • “The counterculture...just completely copped all of the swag that the military had, you know.” — Jasper Craven ([16:25])
  • “Ours is not to do or die, ours is to smoke and get high.” — Jasper Craven, quoting a Vietnam Zippo ([17:57])
• On Surplus Style:
  • “We took something that was basic and utilitarian and you could zhuzh it up. I’m gonna take this stuff and I’m gonna make it look cool. And that’s what my father did.” — Carl Goldberg ([29:50])
  • “We started dying things...gas mask bags made great purses. It was just a matter of looking at things in a fresh way.” — Patricia Ziegler ([33:20])
• On Modern Army Surplus:
  • “None of these clothes in this store were made for the military. None of this was actually surplus. They were all entirely new, cheap clothes made to imitate...” — Avery ([50:29])

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Notable Timestamps

• [00:00–04:31]: Ray Christian describes his Army upbringing and transition to middle class routines
• [11:22–12:42]: Vietnam War veterans reflect on the social meaning of service and return of field jackets as civilian protest wear
• [16:25–19:31]: Counterculture’s adoption of the M65 and symbolic fashion shifts
• [29:50–33:16]: Transition of surplus from function to fashion, birth of Banana Republic
• [43:32–44:12]: Realization that surplus supply is not endless; Banana Republic pivots
• [48:25–50:49]: Modern surplus—scarcity, replication, and the enduring mythos of army gear

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Episode Tone & Style

Avery Trufelman's narration is lively, gently self-deprecating, and always inquisitive, while her guests’ voices—especially Ray’s—bring warmth, humor, and grounded historical perspective. The episode is rich in anecdote and trivia, blending pop culture references (Taxi Driver, Annie Hall), personal stories, and sharp social commentary.

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Takeaway

“Gear: Chapter 4” crafts a vivid tapestry of how army surplus shifted from mere leftovers to symbols of rebellion, then to commercial fashion, and ultimately to a sought-after slice of American nostalgia. The field jacket, once a marker of service and utility, became a canvas for defiance, a badge of outsider status, and finally, a threaded presence in everyday style—its meaning as mutable and layered as the lives of those who wore it.

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For more on the episode, including visuals and further reading, visit articlesofinterest.substack.com.

Transcript

[Ray Christian]

Platoon, halt. Right face. On my command. Chapter.

[Patricia Ziegler]

Four.

[Avery Trufelman]

This gentleman you hear doing the drill sergeant introductions for each chapter is Ray Christian.

[Ray Christian]

Just for shits and giggles, as we used to say in the Army. Trufelman, front and center. What the hell are you even doing here?

[Avery Trufelman]

He's good, right? Ray is a professional podcaster. That's how we know each other. He has a beautiful show called what's Ray Saying? But he's also the real deal.

[Ray Christian]

I spent a couple of years as a drill sergeant. Like all people in my occupation, I was an infantryman.

[Avery Trufelman]

An infantryman is a ground combat soldier. The infantry is the foundational element of the Army. They're the ones who actually pull triggers. When you think of an infantryman, you can think of those little green plastic army men, but there aren't as many little green army men as you'd think. The infantry is only 15% of active.

[Ray Christian]

Duty army, so there's only a few people that serve in that. There are probably more policemen in New York City than there are infantrymen than the whole United States army, really. So everybody is in support of that tip of the spear. And I happen to have been one of those, you know, I was in the infantry, so I was a rifleman and a grenadier and a machine gunner, all that pretty much at the same rank, Private, then sergeant in a airborne infantry unit.

[Avery Trufelman]

Were you, like, aspiring to ascend through the ranks, or is that just something that happens if you stick around long enough?

[Ray Christian]

Well, you have to aspire, because at certain points, it's kind of like up or out. You don't get to stay as long as you want to stay. At certain ranks, you have to go if you don't.

[Avery Trufelman]

So you wanted to stay.

[Ray Christian]

I wanted to stay because that's all I had to do was to stay, because I grew up in the Army. I joined the army when I was 17, so it was the only adult life I'd ever known. Every major milestone that you could think of that you have as a young adult from 17 to 21, all that happened to me in the Army.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is when Ray gets asked, so.

[Ray Christian]

Ray, what made you decide that the ghetto life was not for you? Being a criminal was not for you.

[Avery Trufelman]

It's this idea that the military saved you.

[Ray Christian]

I was breaking into somebody's house one day, and it just struck me. This country has done a lot for me. I'm gonna change my ways, and I'm signing up.

[Avery Trufelman]

Obviously, Ray's joking. Ultimately, the military was just a good fit for him.

[Ray Christian]

I was a kid climbing giant Buildings, you know, to get pigeons. I was crawling on the underpass of a highway once under the bottom, like Spider man, you know. But that was, that was me. I was that kid. And when I joined, I was around other people like that. Broken football players and high school wrestlers and hunters and guys who ran and boxed and grew up a little edgy, you know. So why do you do it? If you come from my background or people who come from blue collar backgrounds who do dangerous work anyway, if you work in mines, if you work in tunnels, if you work on the roadways, you work on top of scaffolds putting buildings together, the blue collar world is already dangerous.

[Avery Trufelman]

And unlike working in a mine or digging tunnels or working roadways, the army had lunch.

[Ray Christian]

Lunch? Yeah, you don't have to be hungry all day. You could actually have a mid break in there. The military regularly made sure that you had three meals always. And that to me was like really over the top because I never ate like that ever.

[Avery Trufelman]

Three, like you didn't eat lunch.

[Ray Christian]

Three. Lunch was school, maybe summertime, never, holidays, never. But the army lunch three guaranteed meals a day, getting you up to nutritional standards. Eating them good meals every day. Say fix your teeth, fill all your cavities, get you off of drugs and alcohol, get you to program. It didn't matter what you said was wrong with you, they would look into it. It's that kind of leapfrog into the middle class. It's as simple as that.

[Avery Trufelman]

The army introduced Ray to all these middle class norms and expectations that he'd never ever thought about before is these.

[Ray Christian]

Little details of what the rest of the world held as standards of behavior. Life that didn't even know existed. One of them was sheets. Two sheets on the bed. Changing sheets every week, mind blown.

[Avery Trufelman]

There was laundry day, There was regular cleaning day.

[Ray Christian]

I definitely learned how to mop, clean, wax, strip, buff floors like an expert.

[Avery Trufelman]

Shirts had to be folded, pleats had to be ironed.

[Ray Christian]

That's the ticket punch for those of us who don't go to college. So it's a start for those of us who come from that background and we trying to get that government job, that city job, that business, business job. I can work in your factory and be a mailman. I was a proud American service member too, sir. Clean cut, good, all American negro. That is the reason why blacks have always served.

[Avery Trufelman]

The Buffalo Soldiers were there on the front lines in Cuba. The NAACP encouraged black Americans to join up in World War II. Military service was indisputable proof of worthy citizenship. You could rub that in the face of any racist, because they would always.

[Ray Christian]

Throw up the fact that we contribute nothing. Blacks don't do anything. They never contributed.

[Avery Trufelman]

And Ray thinks this is precisely why there's always so much political tension around who can serve in the US military.

[Ray Christian]

Trans people, gay people. Even when I served there were just always this mumbling in the, you know, damn black people and Hispanics, goddamn women and homosexuals. That all comes back to what I said before. Because if they serve, they're going to say we contributed to society. So that's the motivation for keeping them out. Because they might do good shit and ask for rights.

[Avery Trufelman]

Social advancement, respect, lunch, dental care. These were all reasons that Ray and his fellow blue collar soldiers joined the military. A burning desire to defend the homeland. Less so.

[Ray Christian]

Very few people join with any understanding of that kind of global ideas. The politics is so probably low down on a scale in terms of people having views about the right and wrong of deployments and the US military actions abroad. You know what they're thinking about is getting low interest rate on the car. If your life is a little more privileged. The motivation for the guys from the middle and upper middle classes and the guys in the upper classes from the officer ranks, their motivation may be more patriotic, sure, but the attrition rate amongst them on that is high too.

[Avery Trufelman]

Because being a soldier, as Ray found out, is a very hard job.

[Ray Christian]

You're bitching and complaining on a regular basis. You just can't function without complaining. Because everything is stupid when you're a private. Everything because you do things that don't make no sense.

[Avery Trufelman]

Like what?

[Ray Christian]

Cleaning garbage cans until they're spit polished up trash all the time. Military bases are just sparkling clean. Hard to be patriotic when you're cleaning out garbage cans, you know, and then you may not be feeling it when you are freezing to death on an ambush patrol on a demilitarized zone in Korea. You're in the army talking shit because we're on the shitty end of the stick for everybody else it's theoretical, you know, and political and slacktivism. When you're in this shit you can say this is fucked up.

[Avery Trufelman]

And so you're like in battle being like this war, this is fucked up.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty constant. The people who tell stories that are super hyper positive are the stories that I'm suspicious of.

[Avery Trufelman]

And yeah, Ray knows what you're wondering.

[Ray Christian]

Probably everybody who ever served across all times, that's the number one question. Did you kill anybody? That's the number one question. Usually it's Kind of just. They're just throwing it out there, or there's morbid curiosity. Some people are more thoughtful, I should say. Thoughtless people ask those questions. So the answer would be, I'm going to say yes, directly and indirectly. When I was in it is all I wanted.

[Avery Trufelman]

You wanted to see combat.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. That's career enhancing.

[Avery Trufelman]

After months of cleaning garbage cans and menial tasks, Ray wanted to fight.

[Ray Christian]

And we talk about. And have conversations about. Other people are scared to do this, and they won't do it. Never. That's when you're in it.

[Avery Trufelman]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Some people want to test it, find out could they do it. Could you. Would you run? Would you curl up in a ball?

[Avery Trufelman]

I just. It just feels so antiquated to me, Ray. I'm like a proud coward.

[Ray Christian]

Well, this is the same thing that makes people shoot people. A few people will go, I won't. You're gonna have to kill me. I won't kill anybody. But tested, it takes a great soul to be tested, truly, in your belief in. I don't want to be aggressive. I don't want to do this. You might probably get to a point where you're gonna go, no, I want to stay alive. You'll want to live. Instinct. And of course, after that, you're going to hate everybody for what you had to do to stay alive and you survive. And you're very bitter.

[Avery Trufelman]

Are you very bitter? You don't seem. You seem the opposite of bitter.

[Ray Christian]

Well, I mean, it's in a place.

[Avery Trufelman]

Do you think you knew what you were signing up for because you had heard stories about the military from your family?

[Ray Christian]

You hear a romanticized version. These are World War II footages. And you see black men looking very dignified and courageous, beautiful and just wonderful. And you can look at those photographs and go, this is my granddaddy. This is my great grandfather. Look at him. Wonderful. We're so proud of his service.

[Avery Trufelman]

But Ray was also hearing another version of what he was signing up for.

[Ray Christian]

From guys who served in Vietnam, who wouldn't have been but five, six years older than I was, who were getting drafted and hated in.

[Avery Trufelman]

When Ray enlisted In June of 1978, it was three years after the Vietnam War ended. So he went in with lower expectations and sobering warnings to where you're a.

[Ray Christian]

Goddamn fool for serving in the military, in the black community. Why would you serve for the white man? Why would you serve for a country that doesn't give a damn about you? Are you stupid? Are you stupid? So I knew that.

[Avery Trufelman]

And around this time, the Funny thing was, no matter their opinion of the war, no matter if they were in the military or not, no matter if they had fought in Vietnam, by the late 70s, everyone was wearing army field jackets.

[Ray Christian]

I think John Lennon used to wear.

[Patricia Ziegler]

Yes.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, I was in the army, but like, I would go home on leave or be out, you know, I'd have on my field jacket, my jeans.

[Avery Trufelman]

After the social and political upheaval of the 1960s, there was this odd flash of unity before the death of the military surplus store. After the break, when I'm at parties, after I get through the mortification of being like, yes, I'm a podcaster, people are like, you live on that. The answer is mostly. But yeah, for a big project like this, what I'm doing now, this gear series, like, yeah. And the only reason I'm able to do this is because of Radiotopia. What's Radiotopia? Basically, they sell my ads and these really cool advertisers. I only shill for products that I believe in and I like and I stand by. Radiotopia helps me do that and they give me the money up front and they pay themselves back with the ad money they make. And the nice thing about this model is we live in this world where I feel like every podcast you like is like, okay, if you like this now, you have to give me $5 a month. But I will ask you this one thing. Maybe donate once. And donate not just to me, but to Radiotopia. It's not just giving to articles of interest, it's giving to a bunch of other shows. Radiotopia is a collective. They're a non profit collective. And the money from donations doesn't go to Radiotopia, it goes directly back to shows. And the cool thing is like, we pool it, we share it. It's this collectivized model. I'm so proud to be a part of Radiotopia. It's so stupid. For the longest time I was giving $5 a month to Radiotopia and they were like, stop giving money to Radiotopia. Like, we're just giving it back to you. Head to Radiotopia fm Donate. That's Radiotopia fm. Donate. Gifting season is ramping up. And I think the best gifts are the ones that I'm so excited to give because I can't wait to see the look on their faces. The granddaddy of great gifting is Macy's. They've been doing it for 167 years. The reason that Macy's has stuck around is their curation and their personalized guidance. These days, it's all too easy to just click a button online and buy stuff. But Macy's originated as a department store, and they know what it's like to put thought and energy and excitement into the ritual of gift giving. Shop@macy's.com or in store. Okay, scooping it in My package of AG1 just arrived. You add one scoop of AG1 to 8 to 10 ounces of cold water. Shake, shake, shake. And this is me trying out my very first drink. Oh, it does taste like vanilla and pineapple. It's this one nutritional scoop with five probiotic strains, over 75 vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, probiotics, functional mushrooms, superfoods, and B vitamins. It's just packed with good stuff. This is my new morning ritual. AG1 couldn't have arrived at a better moment. AG1's gonna help me stay one scoop ahead of the winter. I really wanna beef up my immunity before holiday travel and before the darkness of winter totally throws off my circadian rhythms. And before I start gorging myself on all those holiday meals, head to drinkag1.comarticles to get a free welcome kit with an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3K2. Subscribe that's drinkag1.comarticles these are mostly 41 jackets. Mackinaws journalist and costume historian Charles McFarland has a number of authentic field jackets, some that were precursors to the M43, a number that came after.

[Charles McFarlane]

I love the kind of sporterized version of the 43 jacket.

[Avery Trufelman]

And then Charles laid out this one 1940s field jacket that was in terrible shape.

[Charles McFarlane]

The lining is in bad shape and it's been repaired. It's not a great example, but Charles.

[Avery Trufelman]

Flipped the jacket over. That was such a good reveal. There's a peace sign on the back.

[Charles McFarlane]

Yeah, so there's a peace sign on the back. Probably done in some kind of marker.

[Avery Trufelman]

Really janky.

[Charles McFarlane]

Yeah. It is a really great example of a jacket that was acquired by someone in the 1960s and worn during the counterculture movement.

[Avery Trufelman]

In the 1960s, there was still tons of military surplus leftover from World War II. But unlike the previous generation, the generation that had treated this surplus like good quality, cheap basics, the anti war movement of the 60s flaunted these old field jackets and fatigues. They weren't playing down the fact that these were military clothes. They were playing it up. They enjoyed actively messing with the symbolism and uniform of the United States Army.

[Jasper Craven]

The counterculture that existed During Vietnam just completely copped all of the swag that the military had, you know.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is Jasper Craven, a journalist who covers the military and veterans issues.

[Jasper Craven]

My dad was deeply involved in the anti war movement to the point that he dated Jane Fonda for a time.

[Avery Trufelman]

Get out.

[Patricia Ziegler]

Yeah, there's a terrible demonstration going on outside.

[Avery Trufelman]

Well, in that case, I better call.

[Ray Christian]

Out the 3rd Marines.

[Patricia Ziegler]

You can't, Richard.

[Avery Trufelman]

Why not? It is the 3rd Marine. Famously, in 1971, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland toured an anti war comedy show across Southeast Asia called FTA or Fuck the Army. And stationed soldiers loved it.

[Patricia Ziegler]

There are apparently Several thousand more GIs outside that can't come in, so we're going to do a second show.

[Avery Trufelman]

Like, there was an anti war movement within the Army.

[Jasper Craven]

The military was used to fawning coverage. Boys desperately running up to the recruitment station the day they turned 17. So they always assumed that they would hold a soft place in the heart of America. And when they lost that, they became pretty spooked. And because so many people all of a sudden became acutely aware of how the military worked because they were getting drafted into it and seeing its barbarism and its brutality and the emptiness of the mission and everything else, it just, it created this massive movement.

[Avery Trufelman]

Exhibit A, a vintage Zippo lighter that Jasper has.

[Jasper Craven]

It says it on the Zippo and it's been in Vietnam. It's like this insane artifact from that time and that place. It says on it, ours is not to do or die, ours is to smoke and get high. That is all I need to refute someone's argument that, like, man is inherently violent.

[Avery Trufelman]

The Vietnam War is this revolution in aesthetics, right? It's this move from do or die to smoke and get high, to talk.

[Jasper Craven]

About, like, style for a min. It used to be that at West Point, one of the few perks of being a West Point cadet is that on the weekends you could take a bus or a train down to Manhattan and be treated like royalty. You put on your uniform and you could get free drinks. Cadets would sometimes get free hotel rooms. You were a hero. You were 18, 19, you were in Manhattan. You had the time of your life. It was incredible. But then Vietnam happened and all of a sudden there were people protesting outside of the gates at West Point. And if you went out of those gates with your uniform, chances are you would get screened at. And all of the girls at Vassar and the women's colleges all of a sudden were like, we don't want to actually hang out with the West Point guys. Anymore. You know, we want to go smoke pot on the lawn and sing Peter, Paul and Mary. And the uniform lost its luster. And a new style that was an explicit reaction to it came into vogue.

[Avery Trufelman]

It was in vogue to wear the military issue field jacket with long hair, to wear it with jeans, to draw on it, to put a patch on it, to wear it wrong. And by the 1970s, a new version of it had appeared in surplus stores. There was an updated field jacket for the Vietnam War, the M65 derivative of the 43 jacket. The M65 was the latest version of that green M43 field jacket. M still stands for model. This one made, of course, in 1965. It's essentially still the olive green, scientifically tested, layered military jacket that you are probably imagining. But the M65 has some cool new features.

[Charles McFarlane]

And then the M65, that one's getting, like, even more technical. That one's probably like the closest to, like, gorp stuff that you could find in the 60s, right? Where you have this collapsible hood that zips into the collar of the jacket, creating, like a mandarin stand collar. And then there's Velcro along the cuffs, which are designed to hook into large mittens.

[Avery Trufelman]

And so it's amazing. The M65, this Vietnam era field jacket is practical, it's cutting edge, it's affordable, and it's extremely cool. In the counterculture, it's the ultimate subversion.

[Charles McFarlane]

You have movies like Serpico.

[Avery Trufelman]

Al Pacino is wearing a beanie cap and an M65.

[Charles McFarlane]

Supposed to be like a real outsider New York City cop fighting corruption. He's wearing military surplus.

[Avery Trufelman]

It's what the faux hawked Robert De Niro is wearing in Taxi Driver. I mean, the jacket is all over the trope of the mentally scarred, unhinged young veteran coming back from Vietnam. And so the M65 becomes what grizzled outsider rebels wear.

[Charles McFarlane]

It's a way of dropping out of American consumer culture. They're hard wearing uniforms that you don't have to replace, that. It's taking you out of the fashion cycle. It's allowing you to opt out.

[Avery Trufelman]

When asked about the uptick in sales, one Army Navy store manager told the Boston Globe in 1970, the Kids Tell me they're boycotting fashion and rebelling against the system. I believe them.

[Charles McFarlane]

Truly, the dream of the counterculture is to drop, drop out of the system. This is one way to do that.

[Avery Trufelman]

And increasingly, dropping out of the system also meant going outside, sleeping in a tent under the stars, foraging for mushrooms, building a yurt, planting a farm with all the seeds and tools you ordered from the Whole Earth catalog.

[Rachel S. Gross]

Americans became more interested in pursuing outdoor leisure in the late 60s and 1970s as a part of the broader rise of popular environmentalism.

[Avery Trufelman]

Rachel S. Gross, author of Shopping all the Way to the woods in other.

[Rachel S. Gross]

Words, Americans are paying far more attention to their relationship to nature, to what they called Mother Earth. And so going hiking, visiting a national park, going camping were all ways to reconnect with what they felt they had lost. That's not too different in some ways than the kind of elite Northeastern men who were saying we lost our virility and therefore must go to the woods to regain it in 1890. The difference here is that it's a much broader swath of the American population who feels this sense of loss and desire for reconnection.

[Avery Trufelman]

More Americans are now able to get that reconnection thanks to lightweight gear from Jerry and Hollyw Bar and new clothes made with Gore Tex.

[Rachel S. Gross]

There are not other waterproof, breathable rain jackets before Gore tex in the 1970s. That change should not be understated, in part because it reflects new safety for outdoors people who spend a lot of time in those kinds of situations.

[Avery Trufelman]

And these new materials and brands all mean that in the 70s there are so many new options for what to wear outdoors. The North Face was founded in 1966. Bass Pro Shops is founded in 1972. Patagonia Inc. Is founded in 1973. But among this profusion of exciting new brands comes the collapse of an old one.

[Rachel S. Gross]

Whereas other outdoor companies are growing because they continue to specialize in outdoor activities, Abercrombie and Fitch goes in another direction. By the early 1970s, they're selling fashionable bell bottom pants, but not necessarily hiking pants.

[Avery Trufelman]

In the Abercrombie catalog titled the 70s of Christmas, you can buy clothing with built in electric heaters, a floor length velvet caftan, a gold giraffe brooch, a blue fox fur coat lined with new synthetic silk from dupont alongside a light up globe, a hammock, a massive automatic can opener, a flashlight that runs on water, a lamp that doubles as a gun rack, and my favorite, an ATV that can turn into a boat.

[Rachel S. Gross]

So they're quite eccentric in the goods that they sell, and they're trying to maintain a very elite customer base, but not one that's based in any kind of specific sport. This is actually what brings on Abercrombie and Fitch's bankruptcy in the mid-1970s, paving.

[Avery Trufelman]

The way for Abercrombie and Fitch to be purchased and rebranded and reborn in time to terrorize me throughout my middle school years. But in the 1970s, the demise of Abercrombie and Fitch was a clear warning to the other outdoor brands.

[Rachel S. Gross]

They see Abercrombie and Fitch's failure as a cautionary tale about what happens if outdoor companies lean too far into the trends and styles of the day.

[Avery Trufelman]

And maybe this is why these outdoor brands play it pretty safe. Just a few years into their existence, Patagonia releases their classic fleece. So classic it seems almost trendless.

[Charles McFarlane]

So Patagonia snapped you. That's like their classic fleece, right? Has the five snaps.

[Avery Trufelman]

Oh, yeah. You pull over to Charles McFarlane. This design is awfully familiar.

[Charles McFarlane]

That is essentially a five button U.S. army sweater. Instead of it being fleece, it's wool, but it acts the same purpose. It is that mid layer between your base layers and the outer wind resistant layer.

[Avery Trufelman]

By the 1970s, you could buy outdoor clothes, even military style looking outdoor clothes at a lot of different places. The military surplus shop was no longer the de facto place to get gear like it had been in the 1950s. This means in the 1970s, if one chose to wear military surplus, that was a deliberate style decision. That was a statement and it was an interesting statement, right, because it could be anti war, but not necessarily anti soldier.

[Jasper Craven]

Once vets started getting in on the action and throwing their medals on the steps of the capitol and wearing their fatigues in protest movements, Jasper Cravens says.

[Avery Trufelman]

The US Military lost control of their own symbolism.

[Jasper Craven]

And so they kind of had to just be like, we need to stop the draft. We need to sort of like duck down, recalibrate, reconsider ourselves and sort of rebrand.

[Avery Trufelman]

It wasn't only a triumph of the counterculture that ended the draft. There were also a lot of conservative thinkers who were against the draft, but for very different reasons. They thought the drafty army was too big and unwieldy and opinionated and unprofessional. Soldiers were forming their own underground presses. They were making their own attempts at unionization. They were straight up refusing orders.

[Ray Christian]

Back in the world, they call it rebellion. Here it's just a downright refusal.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is a soldier in Vietnam as captured by a report from cbs.

[Ray Christian]

We had the whole company co says, okay, we're going to walk through. And the whole company says, no, negative.

[Avery Trufelman]

The draftee army, it seemed, was careening towards a complete breakdown. And also conservatives who believed in small government thought that government shouldn't make citizens fight.

[Ray Christian]

The use of compulsion is repugnant to our society.

[Avery Trufelman]

Except in cases of dire emergency. The conservative economist Milton Friedman had a big role in ending the draft. He argued that if the US Government just spent more money on military salaries, they could attract and retain an army of 3 million soldiers who would be more professional and serve longer and ta da, we could get rid of the.

[Ray Christian]

Draft and return to a voluntary system.

[Avery Trufelman]

And sure enough, in 1973, when the American army became an all volunteer force, annual pay and housing compensation for soldiers went up by 80%. Enlistment bonuses shot up. VA Health Care got invigorated. The military offered low interest home loans. The end of the draft basically helped create that package of incentives that appealed to soldiers like Ray as a professional soldier.

[Ray Christian]

The idea of draft army was just. No one wanted that.

[Avery Trufelman]

No one. Even though everybody had their different reasons for it. After Vietnam, everyone was on the same page. And this meant purely aesthetically, the anti war stance and the anti war look became accepted enough and safe enough that it became mainstream. The style of actively messing with military surplus, wearing it wrong, putting patches on it, writing on it, was no longer as threatening or radical or disrespectful. It got to the point where military surplus stores themselves were hopping on the trend.

[Carl Goldberg]

And then some would have a bright idea. Let's you'd be a little fashionable.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is Carl Goldberg. His family owned I. Goldberg army and Navy. It was the premier military surplus store in Philadelphia.

[Carl Goldberg]

It was a huge store, and it became the place to shop.

[Avery Trufelman]

Carl had a bunch of the catalogs from Igoldberg.

[Carl Goldberg]

Let me find a really old one. This is 58. That's the year I was born.

[Avery Trufelman]

The 1958 catalog is an outdoor equipment catalog. Igoldberg calls itself Camptown, usa. It looks like the old mailers from Jerry or Holly Bar. It's all gear here.

[Carl Goldberg]

This is a camper's bag, usa.

[Avery Trufelman]

All it says is all rubber, water and airtight. And then you can see in these catalog covers what happened.

[Carl Goldberg]

Over time, my father turned it into a fashion business.

[Avery Trufelman]

On the COVID of the Winter 1977, 1978 I. Goldberg Catalog, now billed as army and Navy and everything, there's a chic model with a blonde bob wearing a military beret cocked like Bonnie Parker.

[Carl Goldberg]

That you took something that was basic and utilitarian and you could zhuzh it up. I'm gonna take this stuff and I'm gonna make it look cool. And that's what my father did.

[Avery Trufelman]

Karl's father imported exotic surplus from Europe, where more countries were becoming liberal democracies and paring down their armies.

[Carl Goldberg]

He found things that were much more interesting in Europe.

[Avery Trufelman]

He would dye the surplus clothes fun colors.

[Carl Goldberg]

You get a cool patch or something, a fun belt or whatever it was, make it look cool.

[Avery Trufelman]

And before long, there would be competition.

[Carl Goldberg]

It just felt so stylized and contrived to me.

[Avery Trufelman]

The it that Carl is referring to. Is a store that Patricia Ziegler started in the late 70s.

[Patricia Ziegler]

The surplus stores were selling things for the lower prices. And I figured that we could actually sell the same pieces for a lot more. If we added style.

[Avery Trufelman]

Initially, Patricia wasn't a fan of military surplus herself.

[Patricia Ziegler]

I was such an anti war person. Because it was the Vietnam War period. And my friends were getting drafted. So I didn't really have a warm feeling about military surplus.

[Avery Trufelman]

In the 1970s, Patricia was an artist. She was working in house as an illustrator at the San Francisco Chronicle. And that's where she started dating a reporter named Mel.

[Patricia Ziegler]

I met Mel, and he would buy things at surplus stores.

[Avery Trufelman]

Mel and Patricia fell in love. And together they quit their nine to five jobs.

[Patricia Ziegler]

We want to see the world, and so we quit. But then freelancing, you know, can get a little tough.

[Avery Trufelman]

They just wanted to make enough money to paint and write and travel.

[Patricia Ziegler]

But then Mel got another freelance assignment in Australia. And when he came back and he was wearing this British Burma jacket.

[Avery Trufelman]

Mel had gotten it at a surplus shop down there. And to Patricia, this jacket had a really different vibe.

[Patricia Ziegler]

And I noticed it right away. Not because it looked military. It looked really safari rugged.

[Avery Trufelman]

Mel looked really dashing and swashbuckling in this jacket. Patricia changed the buttons and added suede patches.

[Patricia Ziegler]

And at a certain point, we said, this is our business. We gotta find more of these jackets, okay?

[Avery Trufelman]

They couldn't find those exact jackets that Mel found in Australia. But they did the best they could in California Surplus.

[Patricia Ziegler]

Kind of a secret world. You have to find the dealer. And we did. Of course, Mel, being a journalist, researched a lot.

[Avery Trufelman]

They found a local dealer who was offloading 500 Spanish military paratrooper shirts. Which makes sense when you think about it. Franco had just died in 1975. Spain was getting rid of surplus from the last regime. Mel and Patricia bought all 500 shirts.

[Patricia Ziegler]

We had $1,500 left in our bank account between the two of us. So this was a substantial.

[Avery Trufelman]

And they sold these shirts at the Sausalito flea market.

[Patricia Ziegler]

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.

[Avery Trufelman]

It was just little touches of style. But These flourishes were all Patricia and Mel needed to stand out.

[Patricia Ziegler]

So I went home and took two shirts apart and put them together to make a four pocket safari dress and some other ones. I took off the epaulettes and made a waistband, took off the arms. I said, doing our part for disarmament here. And we made a skirt. And so Mel said, oh, we've got a business. And found a store that was 400 square feet.

[Avery Trufelman]

In 1978, Patricia and Mel set up a tiny shop in Mill Valley.

[Patricia Ziegler]

I started cutting up jackets and sleeping bags and we started dyeing things. And also we'd sell like gas masks, bags that didn't have any gas masks in them anymore. But they made great purses. It was just a matter of looking at things in a fresh way.

[Avery Trufelman]

There were a number of boutiques like this. There was Commander Salamander in dc, The Cockpit in New York, Camp Beverly Hills in la. All who stocked recut re dyed Zhuzhed up military surplus. It was such a phenomenon that it was actually spoofed on Saturday Night Live.

[Ray Christian]

I got Rhodesian fatigues. I got the Italian camouflage jackets. The kids are crazy about them. They're buying them like hotcakes.

[Avery Trufelman]

Walter Matthau, who was hosting SNL on December 2, 1978, played the Grizzled owner of a traditional military surplus store. And the owner of a newfangled boutique called Shot down in soho is trying to return a bunch of military water canteens that she's painted neon colors and tried to sell as purses. Everyone said the colors were dynamite, but these holes, they're too small. I mean, you put your car keys in it, see, look. And then you never get them out. Never. In 1977, a fashion retail executive told the Boston globe, in the 1960s, students wore old army jackets with peace signs on them, more to make a political statement than to be chic. Students have since tired of protest, but the fatigue look is back. What had been countercultural had become fashion.

[Charles McFarlane]

At this point too. We have the yuppie fication of military clothing.

[Avery Trufelman]

As Charles McFarlane put it to me. The students who were wearing field jackets in the 1960s grew up, they cut their hair, they got jobs, they became conventional bourgeoisie. But they kept their Grateful Dead records and their penchant for surplus field jackets.

[Charles McFarlane]

You have Woody Allen wearing military surplus to go to the Art House Theater in Annie Hall. You have Dustin hoffman in Kramer vs Kramer playing a father going through a divorce living on the Upper west side, and he's wearing an M65 field jacket. It's really in like post hippie, post Vietnam era when these things start to go mainstream. And I think the key to that is the brand. Banana Republic.

[Avery Trufelman]

Yes, Banana Republic.

[Patricia Ziegler]

As soon as we decided to have a store, we said, okay, well what are we going to call this? And Mel just intuitively just said, oh, it's Banana Republic because it's struggling young countries that want to sell the surplus from the last dictator. I mean, it was very uncool to say this, very unwoke, you know, but at that time, we were having so much fun with it and we weren't politically correct at all. We were an artist and a writer. We weren't business people.

[Avery Trufelman]

How Banana Republic went from irreverent swashbuckling surplus to just khaki. After the break, before there was scrolling through pictures, there were shop windows. That's really how everybody knew what the new merchandise was. And the big pioneer of the holiday window display was Macy's. Macy's has been transforming shopping into an experience much more than a transaction for over 167 years. They've always set themselves apart by their curation and personalized guidance and their careful gift wrapping and their human touch. And they've been continuing their traditions like their store windows. Because gift giving can be magical. Shop@macy's.com or in store. Quince is the go to place for affordable everyday luxury like Mongolian cashmere sweaters for $50 and silk dresses under $100. But beyond clothes, Quince has so many other little luxuries that make for great gifting. Na na. Ooh.

[Rachel S. Gross]

This is my favorite.

[Avery Trufelman]

I know you can get it at Quint's. Really? Quint's has a whole bunch of high end skincare products for those with discerning taste, like my sister. It is the plum beauty oil and I really found it's just done wonders.

[Jasper Craven]

Your skin looks great.

[Avery Trufelman]

You're so pretty.

[Rachel S. Gross]

Thank you.

[Avery Trufelman]

Genuinely, really psyched about this. Yes. Step into the holiday season with layers made to feel good, look polished and last from Quince, perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself. Go to quince.com of interest for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n C E of interest to get free free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com of interest.

[Odoo Sponsor Representative]

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[Avery Trufelman]

Okay, so you just ripped a sleeve off.

[Bing Dong Duan]

Yeah.

[Avery Trufelman]

I am watching Bing Dong Duan, an industrial design grad student at RISD, rip apart an authentic M65 field jacket. Oh, you just ripped the whole front pocket off.

[Bing Dong Duan]

Yeah, that's the front pocket. And there is another front pocket.

[Avery Trufelman]

It's actually so dramatic. It just looks like you're ripping apart this whole jacket. Don't worry, surplus heads. Bing Dong took this original M65 jacket and made all the elements of it removable with Velcro so he could take it apart and put it back together again and see how it works.

[Bing Dong Duan]

So I'm quite good at a sewing machine.

[Avery Trufelman]

The M65 jacket, to him is a pinnacle of design.

[Bing Dong Duan]

I'm fascinated to the Vietnam gears, like some M65 jackets or some lightweight backpacks.

[Avery Trufelman]

Bing Dong has a massive collection of American militaria. When we met up, he was dressed more like a sniper than an industrial design grad student.

[Bing Dong Duan]

At the very beginning, I started collecting Vietnam gears. I love collecting military things, and most of them are still in my home in China.

[Avery Trufelman]

I mean, do people in China think it's weird that you collect all this stuff?

[Bing Dong Duan]

Yeah, people think I'm nuts.

[Avery Trufelman]

But I was like, why United States military? Why not Chinese military?

[Bing Dong Duan]

You know the reason I didn't like collecting Chinese military gears, because those gears are not designed for the extreme violence. Because she didn't test. It's all about the testing. Because military gear is a tool. Otherwise, the tool is decoration.

[Avery Trufelman]

And for Bing Dong, the tools and gear of the Vietnam War were of special interest.

[Bing Dong Duan]

The Vietnam War is Have more unique taste for me. Yeah, because that all started from Special Forces. U.S. special Forces in Vietnam War, Special forces units.

[Avery Trufelman]

Put very simply, these units do specialty tasks that regular infantry cannot do. They sort of started during World War II when groups like the Army Rangers were established to perform very specific raids. Like, it would be a group of army rangers who would go rescue a bunch of Americans from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. And there were underwater demolition teams who would go dismantle bombs with a knife. Really badass stuff. But the Green Berets are considered the first modern special operations unit as we know them. Soldiers in the army have to, like, audition to Become a Green Beret. Green Berets get extra years of training. Green Berets learn foreign languages, they go off to other countries, and they establish relationships with foreign militaries. They were created to engage in unconventional or guerrilla warfare. They were meant to go behind enemy lines. And their timing could not have been better for the Vietnam War. These were the ones who were going to go and work with the South Vietnamese fighters. As President Kennedy said in a 1962 address to West Point, this is another type of warfare, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin. War by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins. War by ambush instead of by combat. The same year Kennedy made that speech, he created more specialty teams. He made SEAL Teams 1 and 2 for maritime reconnaissance. So this is what special operations are for. They're smaller, more elite teams that operate outside of normal military procedures. They don't have to use standard military equipment, and they don't have to wear standard military clothes because they are concerned.

[Bing Dong Duan]

They are not official group at the very beginning. So these are gears are not military.

[Avery Trufelman]

Issues to this day. A number of special operators have their own budget for clothes and gear. It depends on the group and their mission. But sometimes the clothes don't have to be Barry compliant. Sometimes it can be whatever they need to get the job done.

[Bing Dong Duan]

There are so many US Special forces in Vietnam War. For example, their tiger strap shirt, they are not made in US Use US Material. No, they are made in Japan use Japan materials.

[Avery Trufelman]

Bing Dong is fascinated by the world of the United States special Forces. He's as intrigued by the modern special ops gear as he is by the perfection of the standard issue M65 jacket.

[Bing Dong Duan]

Vietnam gear is quite similar to nowadays. So I just like press the pause button for the Vietnam gears and switch into the modern gears.

[Avery Trufelman]

Bing Dong has switched from collecting Vietnam gear to collecting modern special ops gear, really out of necessity.

[Bing Dong Duan]

Vietnam gears, that price gonna be super, super expensive. And as a student, no way.

[Avery Trufelman]

The supply of Vietnam military surplus was limited. There was much less Vietnam surplus than World War II surplus. And there was less surplus generally after the draft ended, when the quartermaster corps stopped commissioning industrial quantities of clothes. For many millions of drafted Americans, the surplus supply was dwindling. But Bing Dong only realized this when he started trying to buy it up. And so did Patricia Ziegler.

[Patricia Ziegler]

It wasn't going to last at the level we were selling it.

[Avery Trufelman]

Patricia and Mel had started banana Republic in 1978, inspired by the look of European military surplus. And their timing was kind of terrible throughout the 1970s or Western Europe was shrinking Their militaries. The Netherlands had ended their draft a year before the United States did. Belgium had reduced their conscription terms. The UK had already ended their draft in 1960. And in the 1970s, they shrunk their armed forces even more. Western European countries were slashing their defense budgets. They were demilitarizing. Patricia could see the writing on the wall. It was inevitable.

[Patricia Ziegler]

I knew that surplus was going to run out. It wasn't going to last.

[Avery Trufelman]

This fact kept Patricia up at night.

[Patricia Ziegler]

We also knew that we had to start manufacturing, which is why we made the deal with the Gap.

[Avery Trufelman]

A friend of theirs introduced them to the founder of the Gap, Don Fisher.

[Patricia Ziegler]

So he brought Don Fisher by our store, and Don was fascinated.

[Avery Trufelman]

How could he not be?

[Patricia Ziegler]

It did not look like a surplus store. We turned the store into a little safari. The front of the building was zebra striped. We leopard printed the walls. I put Astroturf on the floor and turned the poles that were holding the ceiling up into palm trees.

[Avery Trufelman]

Banana Republic was irreverent, cheeky. It was fascinating. It was a project of these two artists.

[Patricia Ziegler]

Every item would have a story. We made up stories. I mean, we had Italian camouflage jackets without hoods, but they had snaps. And Mel said it's because the Italians have been on strike for 30 years or something. The stories would just come and would write them in the catalog. I'd draw little illustrations.

[Avery Trufelman]

Banana Republic was an adventure. And the clothes were just the entryway in.

[Patricia Ziegler]

When women would come into the store, they'd try on like a men's shirt and I'd double belt it with the Gauto belts and just style everything. And it was more about as irreverent kind of expedition travel wardrobe. We were just having fun while working our tails off. We were after people who just got the style of it and the humor of it and wanted well made clothing.

[Avery Trufelman]

So you were acquired by the gap in 83?

[Patricia Ziegler]

Yes, yes. The Gap came in and as soon as we finalized the deal, Don took us to the Gap's Beverly Hills store. And so Don takes us in there and says, what do you think? What could you guys do with this space?

[Avery Trufelman]

This prime real estate that had belonged to the Gap would now be the Banana Republic flagship in Los Angeles. Mel and Patricia made their mark.

[Patricia Ziegler]

We put a Quonset hut in and we built a big elephant coming out of the wall. I put in a real creek. I wanted to fly an airplane from the ceiling. We found an old bush plane and they roped off the street and we brought the bush plane down Santa Monica.

[Avery Trufelman]

Boulevard and they were off to the races. The Gap wanted expansion.

[Patricia Ziegler]

They wanted us just to open stores as fast as we could. And we were breaking records in shopping malls for sales per square foot.

[Avery Trufelman]

And so with help from the Gap, they went from sourcing surplus to designing original clothes that looked like surplus, including their own versions of an M65 jacket.

[Patricia Ziegler]

It became safari and expedition clothes rather than safari and surplus. I guess we did that with the Gap acquisition.

[Avery Trufelman]

It wasn't the same. What happened? Why is Banana Republic not like this anymore?

[Patricia Ziegler]

I don't know. At a certain point it just got too big, too fast.

[Avery Trufelman]

Patricia and Mel jumped ship in 1988.

[Patricia Ziegler]

We did it for 10 years. It was really good. We saw the world and our son was born. And it just seemed like a good time to leave. It was a good time to leave.

[Avery Trufelman]

And of course the Gap got rid of the zebra stripes and the Quonset huts and the made up stories and the hand drawn illustrations. There's more money to be made in more serious stuff.

[Patricia Ziegler]

And they tried to make it into different things over the years, but in the past couple of years they've gone back and they've returned to a lot of the heritage.

[Avery Trufelman]

As I record this last month, Banana Republic launched Banana Republic Archive, where they're telling the story of Patricia and Mel and selling some Banana Republic pieces from the 80s and 90s. They're coming around to embrace this history and to embrace this look. The look of loose jackets in khaki and brown that look like they've been fished out of a pile. New clothing that looks like it was surplus because how fitting. There was no more surplus of surplus. Although, okay, there is some military surplus.

[Logan McGrath]

Out there still, it definitely does exist. Not as big as it was.

[Avery Trufelman]

There are a few military surplus companies like Americana Pipe Dream Apparel, based out of Appleton, Wisconsin, founded by Logan McGrath.

[Logan McGrath]

It's still comparatively to like a new garment, sometimes a very good deal, sometimes a modern like new made Patagonia fleece. Like there are surplus equivalents you can still get from 1999 that come really, that aren't even worn.

[Avery Trufelman]

If you can find something like that.

[Logan McGrath]

Like there's this annual trade show in Vegas where all the surplus companies meet up. That used to be like hundreds of booths, hundreds, 20 years ago. Nowadays they're lucky to get like 20 to 30 booths, really. So it's, it's, it's shrunk a lot because Cold War stockpiles are running out. People aren't making as much stuff. And these days it is getting a little bit more difficult to Source. So, yeah, it's not getting any cheaper on our end or on the consumer side.

[Avery Trufelman]

And now a lot of European countries are starting to hold on to their military surplus.

[Logan McGrath]

Now it's like, ooh, we might need it. We might need it. You'll see a lot of surplus Kevlar helmets and body armor and stuff in use with the Ukrainians because, you know, it's better to have something that's old than not have anything at all.

[Avery Trufelman]

So it's a hard time for surplus sellers.

[Logan McGrath]

You're not always guaranteed to find that next batch of stuff that you can sell.

[Avery Trufelman]

So what is a surplus store supposed to do?

[Bing Dong Duan]

No, no, no.

[Avery Trufelman]

So this is not good.

[Bing Dong Duan]

This is not good. Yeah.

[Avery Trufelman]

Sometimes you come across a surplus store and it's small and dark and dingy and it has piles of field jackets and camo fatigues. But Bing Dong Duan doesn't fall for it.

[Bing Dong Duan]

Once you notice a surplus store have those things especially like this pedal hat.

[Avery Trufelman]

A hat that says army is not a good hat.

[Bing Dong Duan]

No, no, not good.

[Avery Trufelman]

This surplus store on my block did not pass Bing Dong's sniff test.

[Patricia Ziegler]

So these are.

[Avery Trufelman]

These are the M65.

[Bing Dong Duan]

No, just I would say M65 style.

[Avery Trufelman]

Okay.

[Bing Dong Duan]

Because you see, the material is a different and the pocket size is different. Colin is smaller.

[Avery Trufelman]

None of these clothes in this store were made for the military. None of this was actually surplus. They were all entirely new, cheap clothes made to imitate the style of 20th century military surplus. The surplus store had to essentially become a knockoff surplus store. That's what this store was.

[Bing Dong Duan]

Yeah, that's true. But that's the most surplus store looks like nowadays. Just like this, full of cheap surplus things, and people buy it just maybe for cheap.

[Avery Trufelman]

Even Logan McGrath of Americana Pipe Dream, who's still fully devoted to authentic military surplus. He's making his own line of made in USA clothes.

[Logan McGrath]

So I have seen a lot of people pivot to making their own stuff like we do, because it's been 30 years since the Cold War.

[Avery Trufelman]

Surplus comes from big, massive militaries with lots of cheap excess sloshing around. The end of the draft led to a smaller, tighter army that can be accounted for. There doesn't end up being that much left over. It's not like a company supplying to the military is going to be like, oops, we made a couple extra hundred thousand jackets. Clothing for the 21st century army is made to order by private companies who stand to make a lot of money. And this brings us to the story of camouflage. Articles of interest is by Avery Trufelman, but my drafts are listened to and the scripts are edited and the story is shaped by Alison Barringer. Costume historian and journalist Charles McFarlane was an MVP on this one. His master's thesis helped me a lot and many resources here have been pulled from it. Fact checking was by Yasmin Al Syed, music by Lullatone, Ray Royal and Sasami, mixing and mastering by Jocelyn Gonzalez and her team at prx. And couldn't you just listen to Ray Christian talk forever? I rarely say this, but thank heavens that guy has a podcast. What's Ray Saying is like a gift. Ray is one of the blessed few people in the world who I just want to hear cook find what's Ray Saying wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Drew Haupt and thanks to you, dear listener. For images, links and more information, head to articlesofinterest.substack.com.

[Ray Christian]

Radiotopia.

[Avery Trufelman]

From PRX.