In early 19th century India, against the arid and rocky landscape where sparse vegetation clings to craggy hillsides, the British Army’s iconic red coats made them vulnerable. For the first time, they had to consider being less conspicuous, showing less flare.
“The 19th century was a period of small colonial wars, and the British Army learned a lot out at the edges of the empire. They learned a lot about uniform and how better to be strategic—how to use the uniform as something that was integral to battlefield action,” said Jane Tynan, cultural historian and the author of British Army Uniform and the First World War: Men in Khaki.
The solution was khaki, a drab brown color that evoked the environment soldiers occupied in India during the colonial period. In fact, “khaki” is an Urdu word for “dust-colored.”
An autochrome picture from 1915 shows French soldiers in a trench, wearing blue and khaki uniforms.
Photograph by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud, Tallandier/Bridgeman Images
Khaki was the first widely adopted use of camouflage technology in military uniforms. Tim Newark, author of Brassey’s Book of Uniforms, called khaki “the greatest change of all to the future of uniforms.”
In its 176-year history, khaki has continued to be a common military uniform, but has also become the uniform of youth, business, and adventure, carrying its colonial connotations with it through history.
From combat to college students
The first use of khaki fabric in military uniforms is attributed to Sir Harry Lumsden, founder of the Corps of Guides in India and his second-in-command William Hodson. Established in 1846 during the British East India Company’s occupation, the Corps of Guides was made up of Indian soldiers who acted as scouts and participated in combat on behalf of the British Indian Army. In 1848, Hodson said he would “make [the Guides] invisible in a land of dust.”
Early khaki uniforms were created by dying white cotton fabric with mud from the region. Around the turn of the 20th century, troops began to source dyed fabric from England. During this period, Britain primarily imported cotton from the United States and its colonies in India and Egypt.
Khaki military uniforms were the first widespread use of tactical camouflage, and the light fabric was more suitable for combat in warm regions. In 1897, khaki became the official uniform for all British troops overseas. Other armies soon began to use khaki uniforms, including the U.S. Rough Riders fighting in the Spanish-American War and South African soldiers in the Boer War.
British women wore khaki while serving in the United States Naval Headquarters in London during WW2. The lightweight material, in a range of muted colors, was a popular military uniform during this time.
Photograph by Daily Herald Archive, National Science & Media Museum/SSPL/ Getty Images
Khaki has been used to describe a range of shades of cream, yellowish tan, light brown, and grayish green (also called “drab”), and the use of these shades in military uniforms continued to spread during World War I and World War II.
Popular civilian uses of khaki took hold in this period, including khaki clothes for outdoor laborers in mining and agriculture, as well as recreational activities like tennis, golf, hiking, and camping. In the early 20th century, a romantic image of khaki-clad adventurers exploring new lands, studying “exotic” cultures, and conquering wildlife on safari arose.
Near Raxaul, in the Bihar State of India, American scientists hunting birds while riding in a handcar pushed by laborer. Following WWII, khaki was popularly worn by self styled outdoor explorers. Today, fashion historians say this use of khaki was simply another iteration of the colonizer’s uniform.
Photograph by Volkmar K. Wentzel, Nat Geo Image Collection
This romanticized image of khaki fueled its appeal among civilians, who sought to emulate the attire of explorers and adventurers. In the U.S., khaki grew in popularity among the working class and people exploring the outdoors like Teddy Roosevelt.
According to Tracey Panek, historian for Levi Strauss, the company started marketing khaki clothes suitable for outdoor activities in the 1910s. Levi Strauss went on to create khaki products that appealed to G.I.s returning after the war, college students, and later the Dockers brand of khaki pants that launched the business casual revolution in the 1990s.
Civilian khaki fashions permeated the 20th century, and was popular with manual laborers, preppy students, businessmen, and school children, but khaki has always retained its military connotations.
Male students study languages in a large listening lab in 1953 in Washington, D.C. During this time, companies began mass producing functional, wearable khaki pants that were worn in the classroom and at the office.
Photograph by John E. Fletcher and Anthony B. Stewart, Nat Geo Image Collection
The fashion legacy of the first khaki-clad soldiers
Today, fashion historians are rethinking the once-romanticized colonial aesthetic.
Historian Tynan said the mid-century khaki adventurer’s uniform is a conspicuous nod to colonial military and police dress.
“When I see these characters, these anthropologists and adventurers in the early 20th century wearing these clothes, I think it looks very imperialistic to me. It’s a hangover from the past, where they are marking themselves out as being the person who’s in charge and the person who is studying colonial bodies,” she said.
In the 1960s, oil workers from Saudi Arabia (left) to Canada (right) wore durable khaki clothing when laboring on rigs.
Photograph by Thomas J. Abercrombie, Nat Geo Image Collection (Top) (Left) and Photograph by David Boyer, Nat Geo Image Collection (Bottom) (Right)
Climate and fashion activist Céline Semaan has observed that peak popularity of khaki pants (and other military gear like combat boots and bomber jackets) occurred during times of heightened global military activity like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the invasion of Iraq after 9/11.
“There’s this idea that the khaki pants, the military boots, these bomber jackets, the camouflage pants, and the whole gear represents this idea of freedom and power. It becomes an aspiration, really, for the general public to see the military as cool, fashionable, something that they want to look like,” she said, “Whenever it comes back on the floor, and it’s being sold as fashionable again, it’s because there is a geopolitical agenda often that is at play.”
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