British Army Uniform and the First World War: Men in Khaki - Tapa dura

'Tynan provides an excellent overview of British army uniform that is of particular interest during this time of First World War commemorations. With practical explanations as to the significance of military uniforms on the battlefield and on the home front, Men in Khaki is required reading if one is to fully understand the increasingly complex nature of war.' - Jennifer Daley, King's College, London, UK in The Journal of Military History

'This well-researched interdisciplinary study assesses the ways in which clothing shapes the gendered bodies and identities of a nation in wartime. Tynan shows how the visual cultures of photographs, tailoring manuals and advertising captured the way uniforms embody and subvert the impact of military life through her readable deployment of theoretical models and archives. In this book, khaki illuminates rather than camouflages memories of 1914.' - Times Higher Education

'Jane Tynan's book is an excellent example of the way that dress history can take its place with other cultural studies of the war... We should be very grateful to her.' - Costume

'The interdisciplinary use of design history, cultural studies, social history and fashion history and theory all feed in to giving multiple perspectives on how and why khaki was used by the army as a cypher for nationalism and a preferred and very specific masculinity.' - Textile History

What did British combatants wear on the western front in the First World War? From the idealized recruitment images to the coarse trousers and ill-fitting tunics, Jane Tynan retraces wartime culture through images and experiences of khaki. Photographs, newspapers, memoirs, war office documents and tailoring ephemera reveal the impact of the war on the tailoring trade. But the story of uniform also involves the wartime knitting projects, the issue of 'Kitchener Blue', Sikhs wearing khaki on the western front, and the punishments given to COs. Military uniforms were designed to make soldiers of civilian men and to rank them according to race and class, but Tynan argues that neat images of men in khaki concealed the reality that clothing an ever-expanding army involved compromise, resistance and improvisation. Uniforms transformed men and war changed British society. This book tells the story of British army clothing during wartime and offers insights into why khaki has endured as the symbol of modern militarism.