For my capstone paper as a Norwich graduate student in military history [1], I wrote about the Prussianization of the Chilean Army. Although this may seem to be a very boring subject, one of the ways that Chile copied the German army was to dress just like them, right down to the pith helmet. Apparently, their thought was that if you dress like one of the most terrifying armies in the world, the German army of the Second Reich, that one’s neighbors will be so terrified that they will be unmanned and unable to attack. While I am certainly not an expert at fashion, this strikes me as a very sensible approach to using fashion to one’s advantage. If one wants to deter aggression from others, looking like something terrifying is a good way to do it. So long as other nations know that you desire peace and not warfare, even a dimly rational neighboring dictator would choose a friendly peace rather than facing the fury of a lookalike German army. No wonder Chile has not been at war since the 1800’s. As rarely as we think about the relationship of fashion to military affairs and geopolitics, it can play a considerably important role. In the case of Chile, that role has been largely positive.
Not all nations are so richly blessed in their military fashion. At the beginning of the American Civil War, many volunteer units dressed like French soldiers in North Africa, who were called Zouaves. Their costumes consisted of brightly colored baggy trousers, oriental flourishes like sashes, and often a Turkish fez cap [2]. If that costume does not say “shoot me,” I don’t know what does. In the meadows and woods and muddy and bloody fields of the United States that made up the battlefields of the American Civil War, it would be hard to find a less practical uniform than the Zouave costume provided, and yet many thousands of men marched off dressed for cosplay and found their uniforms attracted bullets at an alarming rate, and after many deaths, the impractical costumes were left for foppish Foreign legion soldiers in Algeria or the parade ground where standing still and looking pretty did not shorten one’s life dramatically.
Although I have never been the sort of person who has been able to blend in easily, my attitudes concerning fashion are rather intensely pragmatic. In the context of being a soldier, I would not want to draw attention to myself unless I was deliberately serving as a feint to allow others to move with stealth. Give me camouflage appropriate to the local terrain and some night vision goggles so that if I cannot sleep because of the horrors of war, my enemies will only be able to sleep in death themselves, and I will be as content as possible under the circumstances. To dress in ways that would deliberately court danger seems immensely reckless, as I am not a handsome enough man to be so vain about looking good in such deadly serious matters. Give me an inconspicuous and practical uniform and the means to keep myself alive so that I can keep from drawing the attention of my enemies unless it is by my design. The fact that this was not the mindset of mid-19th century American soldiers involved in the bloodiest war of our history is difficult for me to understand.
Usually, unless we are dressed like the Thompson Twins at a truck stop in Wyoming [3], fashion is not a life or death matter in our lives. Yet for soldiers in active combat, how one dresses can make a big difference in whether one stays alive or finds an early grave. In light of the seriousness of that profession, one wonders what would ever possess people in such a position to dress in such a way that would hinder one’s aim of survival for the sake of looking showy. Sometimes in war, as is the case with Chile’s army, a bit of a show can inspire fear in the heart of one’s enemies, by appearing as if one were a much more brutal and vicious army than is the case in reality (unless you were a Chilean citizen who ran afoul of Pinochet after 1973, that is). That said, appearing as a long-lost member of a 1980’s dance pop act is generally not a good way to ensure survival on the battlefield, unless one can inspire one’s opponents to lose focus by laughing at your ridiculous garb. That’s not a safe risk to take.
[1] See the last essay of:
[2] http://www.outfit4events.com/czk/product/2679-zouave-costume/
[3] See, for example:
Edge Induced Cohesion 