Showing posts with label Militaria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Militaria. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Party Suits: Vietnam Pilots Get Their Groove On


One of the joys of this blog is coming across fashion items of the most arcane imaginable sort--the kind that don't even have an entry on Wikipedia. Today, something for the guys . . . party suits.

An innocuous name for a fairly bodacious garment: cotton flight suits first worn by American Air Force personnel stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Worn to parties and other social get-togethers after missions, the suits would be dyed, ornately embroidered by local tailors, and covered with patches that were not always strictly regulation issue.

I think they're fascinating as exemplars of personal and military history . . . and while I'm not convinced they're wearable in any sort of contemporary circumstance, it's nice to know that they're being preserved, and resold, by specialist museums and collectors.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Caviar Communism


Karl's got me puzzling again.

Above is the latest incarnation of that fashion juggernaut, the Chanel bag, fresh off the pages of British Vogue for A/W '09.

And here is a WWII Russian officer's flying cap, now up for sale on ioffer.com.


Is the Kaiser making a deliberate play at the heartstrings of Mother Russia, and all those bazillions (in the new austerity, mere gazillions) to be spent on luxury goods?

No, impossible. Nyet?