kontextmaschine:

Something I think about sometimes is how in the 2000s when the services were in a tough recruitment fight the US Navy decided to improve its image by getting themselves some badass camo uniforms, only in like naval shades of blue, and ignored the precedent of other states using bright orange “tiger stripes” in their patterns and how it turns out the only thing those uniforms actually blended in to, it made it harder to spot sailors who’d fallen overboard

In college I knew a girl doing fashion history who did her Honors thesis on how an army’s uniforms were reliably looser, simpler, with more pockets the more recent they had been in a major conflict and more fitted and ornamented the longer they’d been at peace

…but that in the mid-19th century the major European powers started using fancier parade uniforms at home and more practical “hot weather” ones in the colonies

Which I guess explains like the Rhodesian elite forces and their badass tactical shorts