Babes in Khaki

(apologies on the above to the Firesign Theatre, and the readers expecting babes…)

It’s no accident many folks like military-style clothing.  Traditionally, uniforms are designed to wear well, look good, and present a certain style of the wearer.

Ask any long-haired dude wearing an olive-green field jacket or a Navy pea coat.  Or a motorcyclist in a bomber jacket.

Neatorama presents us with a history of the khaki garb, as first published in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes The Armed Forces.

I live in the desert.  I like khaki.  The only reason I don’t wear it more is I’m also addicted to Wrangler jeans.

Here’s an excerpt from the history of khaki:

~Serving in Peshawar in what was then northwestern India (now Pakistan on the Afghanistan border), Lumsden was given the task of forming the Corps of Guides, a new regiment of infantry and cavalry soldiers. The 300 handpicked men were to serve as guides and scouts as well as fighting forces. Irregular cavalry regiments such as the Corps of Guides were allowed to wear what they wanted, within reason. Lumsden had an idea about what that should be. He’d been experimenting with loose-fitting cotton garments patterned after the local men’s attire and dyed a muddy tan color, which hid the dirt and made the wearer less conspicuous in the dusty landscape of the battlefield. Locals dubbed the duds khaki, from the Hindi and Urdu word khak, meaning dust. Fellow British soldiers started calling the Corps of Guides the “mudlarks” because of the muddy color of their uniforms.~

Seriously.  Please go and read the whole article.  You don’t need to explain you learned all this from a toilet-adjacent book!

h/t Neatorama