Ethics of Historical Clothing - Topic of the day 3/6/25
With so many different eras of clothing from different regimes, it’s difficult to know what you are allowed to wear. Milsurp from one era may be linked to horrible things, for example. Or a style may be associated with a group that many do not agree with. How do you navigate this narrow boundary?
12 Replies
yeah u gotta make sure u wear milsurp from the Good Countries that killed the right people or else the fit is trash and your soul is doomed
Can't wear loser military clothes... Except for :og107: those don't count
No this is exactly why you can wear them
But this logic doesn't always work before anyone gets ideas
The prevalence of military garments within civilian fashion is something I find interesting. We can look back at ww2 where we see purely utilitarian examples such as the use of milsurp chinos that became a staple of ivy fashion all the way to today. Then we see the prevalence of its usage during the Vietnam era as method of protest among anti war advocates on the other end of the spectrum
I think if it wasn’t for the coopting of uniform items by protest movements during the Vietnam war and then slowly normalizing in a less politicized way we probably would not see such a market for it these days
i think the question is of intent and in context
"wear what you want" applies but you're responsible for whatever reaction you get imo, including/especially getting jumped because you didn't understand the cultural connotations of certain clothes
for a while i was dreading a near future when people wore maga hats ironically but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon now 🫠
there comes a point where "i'm wearing and modifying this milsurp piece to embody the fact that i'm actually anti-war" stops being as clear. usually that point is "wearing nazi clothes"
I think it’s valid to expect of any adult who decides to wear milsurp or other historical clothing to be aware of what exactly they’re wearing and what the associations are.
Some pretty obviously are more problematic than others and common sense should pretty easily dictate what’s fair to wear and what isn’t.
Though I have no problem with Nazis wearing Nazi clothing, it makes it easier to find out who to punch.
Yes, like there’s a huge difference between wearing a fishtail military parka over a fit vs wearing Rhodesian brushstroke
And if you can’t suss out that difference idk if we should be talking
Besides stuff from Nazi Germany the only thing I’m weary of is Rhodesian brushstroke and that’s for the modern associations.
I’m also weary of most other brushstrokes and lizard camo for looking too close to the Rhodesian version but that’s me personally
And then modern multicam and stuff in FDE and coyote brown is too associated with modern gun bro larpers. Not that I want any of that. Not in the market for some 5.11 pants
Wearing Nazi things is a literal crime in Austria so thankfully you don’t see much of that around here
What has always kind of irked me tho are world war reenactors
I‘m sure there‘s people out there who do it for the history and do it respectfully but there‘s just soo much war glorification in the community and I don’t like that at all
Like especially because I did research on the thoughts and feelings of individual soldiers during WW1 last year seeing 17yos go to trenches to take pictures in uniforms acting like they love it there just feels incredibly insensitive towards the people who actually had to experience it
But I don’t see anything wrong with wearing surp in your everyday life if you do so respectfully, it‘s good quality and it‘s sustainable so why not
I think it‘s a lot about the meaning you give to your clothes by wearing them
Yeahh, as a historian things like this very much concern me. communities like these often glorify war while i’m sure not the intention, seemingly willingly divorce themselves from the historical record. like choosing to reenact being a nazi? weird asf
As a rule I find a lot of milsurp clothing odd, but that’s more so when it comes to people buying full camo and uniforms.