I like the Civil War style stetsons-cool!
I’m still trying to decide if the Uniformed Secret Service uniforms under Nixon were better or worse than what we’ve seen here so far.
The shakos ain’t helping anything, I’ll tell you that much.
Now here’s a sharp-looking guy in a snazzy beret 
That depends. I’m amongst those chefs who don’t like being made to wear a baseball cap while cooking. Most complaints are about “tradition”, but my complaint is more practical: Brims/bills are good for blocking heat and light coming from above. Cooks deal with heat (and smoke) coming from below, and a brim just traps that heat and smoke around your face. I wear a bandana when I work.
They’re still seen in the Spanish side of that area; they’d almost become lost but are now making a comeback among young men. They’re a lot lighter than most winter hats and caps, do not blow away as easily as most summer ones, and they’re great insulation in both summer and winter without being ticklish.
Yeah, but which version paints a better picture?
No, the modern Kepi inspired fAast food workers hats. You have it a bit twisted. Symbols are usually appropriated in Chronological Order and Inspired Identity (Political, Real, or Existential). That is my only deep insight about Symbology, it can be such a strange science.
The hats of our heroes… it boils down to.
It’s the Tricorne, Kepi, Bicorne theory.
And who doesn’t identify with nyfd.fdny?!@911
I remember I could get an army, straight up desert beret, khaki, regulation, Pre-Desert Storm issue at thje A&N Surplus for a dollar. They even had a metal insert for form. Don’t know which country they came from or where they manufactured at.
The Tricorne, and bicorne, IMO, as a RevWar reenactor are the most useless items I’ve had to wear. Both shapes interfere with the musket being held shouldered on the left shoulder (opposite of today’s arms), though the tricorne is slightly better, and neither does a thing to shade the wearers eyes from the sun.
Prior to getting my own rifleman’s hat (a round brimmed hat, with the left side turned up and pinned with a cockade), I was borrowing a bicorne, which was accurate to the time, but not my unit. My eyes hurt all day, and I was constantly fiddling with it’s placement after knocking it about with my musket barrel. The rifleman’s hat is proper to my unit (a loyalist Ranger company), though we didn’t use rifles. It’s a pain to transport, and put down somewhere, but very practical in the field, and does a great job in the rain, by keeping the water off my face.
Alas, one of the things I’m finding as I learn more about RevWar military equipment, is that much of it was about looks, more than practicality. I imagine that modern military is no different. The beret, except for covering the head, provides no protection from sun, nor rain hitting the face/eyes as far as I can tell.
Actually, today’s military is pretty serious about functionality for field dress; you’re unlikely to find soldiers or marines in the field wearing something as useless as a beret. They’ll probably have a helmet of some kind or a boonie hat, both of which are practical.
I wore a red beret back when I was a Boy Scout.
Berets are fairly silly looking to begin with. The US Army increases that by trying to make it skull tight all around, but still display the flash on front straight up. That is what leads to the pucker. If it was allowed to be softer on the left and smoothly flow into the flash on front, it would look better. But it would still be a beret.
Got a cite that the buttons on shirt collars come from there? Because I’m skeptical. The buttons anchor the collar and enclose the tie.
“Chocolate soldier”? "“Blouse” your pants?
Because they look dumb, with that flat disk on top.
Um, no. The line is about how she would wear the beret, and if the weather was warm, she’d be showing off as much of her body as she could legally expose. As opposed to if it was cold, when she would wear clothes to keep warm. It’s a statement about how sexy she was and how she flaunted it. It makes no sense as a comment about the upkeep of her beret, as if she only wore it on the days it was in good shape or something. (How does the beret go from being in bad shape on one day - worn out - and then in good shape the next? Or are you proposing she would stop wearing the worn out one, and go buy a new one from a second-hand store?)
Why can’t the U.S military go with something like the German WW2 uniforms? I’m not sure it would fly, but they looked good :
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4006/4653948020_8bf13a8444.jpg
Actually, it would fly. See the designs for a prospective new Air Force uniform.
Nazi uniforms are sharp because they were designer made. Hugo Boss had a hand in a few of them. Can the military bring back jackboots? Has it been long enough? Michael Jordan has a Hitler stache.
John Wayne wears a proper beret in the move The Green Berets. It doesn’t hug his head – just touches it at one point on the crown. Much, much better looking.
“don’t look like a chocolate soldier” = don’t make such a point of looking martial that you look affected instead.
“blouse your pants” = when wearing boots, make sure your pants hem doesn’t just hang down loose so you could step on it and stumble or rip it, but gather it neatly at ankle height or above. See here.
(Of course, needless to say, when it comes to uniforms this is just wrong. And he was among the ones who could best work the style!)
That’s exactly what the Tillman photo looks like to me.
I think that uniform looks extremely good. It looks like a police uniform, and police uniforms by and large look good. I don’t think it looks Nazi-like, but I do think it’s very sharp and squared-away. I hope they go with it. A similar uniform, but dark green instead of blue, would look good for the Army.
According to Wikipedia: