Gear: Chapter 2

Gear gets defined by scientific testing and research. And this process was pioneered with the development of the field jacket. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is not your mama's house. This is not summer camp. This is not overnight with a friend. This is not Burger King, because you will never have it your way. You are now the property of the United States Army. What you will get is chapter two.

• 0:19Avery Trufelman?

  Once upon a time, the outdoors was for the most rugged of Americans, the Teddy Roosevelts, who wanted to prove their mettle in the manly arts of hunting and fishing and survival. But shopping for those outdoor activities was considered cheating. And if you shopped for gear, it was a dirty secret.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Many guidebooks often told its readers, "Don't buy anything. If you do, you're essentially showing yourself to be a beginner who doesn't know anything, really, about what the nature experience is supposed to be."

• 0:48Avery Trufelman?

  Rachel Gross, professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver and author of the excellent book Shopping All the Way to the Woods. But, as previously discussed in chapter one, essentially, most white American men did secretly buy their outdoor clothes, which were often buckskin suits.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  They often turned to Native American women, who were the recognized experts at sewing buckskin suits. So they would just buy them? They would just buy them.

• 1:15Avery Trufelman?

  This dirty little secret started to come to light as more and more clothing became mass-produced, and that included outdoor clothing. And one particular shop opened in 1892 that finally, once and for all, removed all the stigma of shopping for outdoor gear. And it was called Abercrombie and Fitch.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Abercrombie and Fitch, based in New York City, sold outdoor clothing and equipment to New Yorkers and taught them, if you want to have the right kit to go to your hunting or camping or fishing trip, you have to stop in at our store.

• 1:52Avery Trufelman?

  And don't worry, fellas, this wasn't your wife's kind of department store. No way. When David Abercrombie and Ezra Fitch opened up a new way to buy camping gear in the heart of the Big Apple, they created an environment that looked like a gentleman's clubhouse.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  A green respite from the hustle and bustle of the city is what they called it. In their catalogs in the early 20th century and purchase what you need from us.

• 2:14Avery Trufelman?

  Taxidermy and antlers filled the walls. There was a log cabin lounge on the roof, which crowned the floors and floors of guns, fishing rods, and tackle, and coats, and hats, and footwear, and anything you could possibly want for your gentlemanly adventure. It was masculine, it was exclusive, it was rugged. But the real draw of a place like Abercrombie & Fitch was its salesmen.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Often, the advertisements for Abercrombie & Fitch or similar companies would invoke the expertise of the shopkeepers, who had tried out all this equipment on, say, their own canoe trip this previous summer.

• 2:48Avery Trufelman?

  Shopping is no longer a cheat. It is, in fact, the guide. Retail becomes the very source of knowledge passed on. Shopping for the right gear becomes a hallmark of expertise and experience.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  And so, that's the first time I see a shift from the notion of the 19th century, which is, don't buy, don't trust shopkeepers. If you have to go talk to them, you're probably doing something wrong, to the early 20th century notion of, the shop is the first place that you must go, because that's where you're going to learn about the right gear.

• 3:24Avery Trufelman?

  Another aspect of this widespread acceptance of shopping was that more men of more classes could access the outdoors. Before the turn of the last century, going outdoors for long stretches of time was not something that regular, middle-class men did for fun.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  In the 1890s, going to a place like a national park was very much an elite activity. It was people who had the time and money to be able to take weeks or months vacation, going on grand tours of the American West via railroads.

• 3:58Avery Trufelman?

  Maybe they would take a stagecoach tour through Yellowstone or Yosemite.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  But not necessarily go on long walks up a glacier.

• 4:05Avery Trufelman?

  And then came the Ford Model T and the highway, and suddenly, you could go get out into nature and make stops whenever you wanted. You could get away for shorter amounts of time, for like, a little weekend hunting trip, or a day hike.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  As automobiles began to become more popular in the early 20th century, a lot more middle-class Americans were able to access vacations in national parks for the first time.

• 4:30Avery Trufelman?

  During this time, there was also a huge expansion of specially designated outdoor areas, thanks to our Rough Rider, the fighting Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt, who, in his time, became known as the Conservationist President. In his administration, Theodore Roosevelt established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game reserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments, including, da-da-da-da, the Grand Canyon. In his appeal to Congress for it, Roosevelt said, "Arizona has a natural wonder.

• 5:11Avery Trufelman?

  I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it." Obviously, the Grand Canyon rules. I am so grateful that Theodore Roosevelt roped it off and protected it from becoming a Pizza Hut. And yet, Roosevelt's idea that man can only mar land is not exactly true. Many Americans, like Roosevelt, loved to romanticize nature as this pure, clean, untouched place.

• 5:51Avery Trufelman?

  But people lived all over these lands before all those Indian wars Teddy Roosevelt was such a fan of. A lot of the national parks that Teddy Roosevelt admired were once sacred sites to indigenous communities. I mean, of course they were. Look at them. They're amazing. But Roosevelt sort of roped these places off and put them under glass. This was Roosevelt's conception of nature, that it was meant to be pristine, wiped away of people. Don't get me wrong, I love national parks, especially since there are some new national parks that might be created in conjunction with tribal governments. National parks are great.

• 6:32Avery Trufelman?

  And fundamentally, they helped create this separation. Nature becomes a place to be visited periodically, rather than imagining nature as just part of the world where we live. The nature of the United States became, according to Rachel Eschgroß, an attraction, something Americans drive out to go see.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  And so, in other words, they became a kind of consumer of nature via the automobile. And the rise of outdoor companies catered to that growing population of outdoor recreationists.

• 7:09Avery Trufelman?

  More outdoor retailers in the vein of Abercrombie & Fitch hawked trail-tested goods sold by expert outdoorsmen. And many new companies were started by expert outdoorsmen, like Eddie Bauer.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  He is most well-known for his quilted-down jacket design. The story that he often told was that he had almost died on a particular trip, but it was only because of this jacket that he was able to survive.

• 7:34Avery Trufelman?

  Most of these early brands were really about hunting. But it is just a hunting, hunting catalog. At the Outdoor Recreation Archive in Logan, Utah, you can see some of the earliest catalogs from the outdoor industry. It's very cool. And all these outdoorsmen are very gentlemanly-looking. They're wearing collared shirts, and they're all smoking pipes. Especially if you look at the first-printed, super-duper-rugged, manly catalog for L.L. Bean. And in the back, it says, "Outside of your gun, nothing is so important to your outfit as your footwear." A hunter named Leon Leonwood Bean owned a specialty hunting shop in Maine.

• 8:17Avery Trufelman?

  Upon returning from one of his many duck-hunting trips in 1911, the legend goes, Bean was irked by his perpetually cold and wet feet, barely protected in his leather-soled shoes. He made his own boots out of soft tan leather with a thick rubber sole. They were waterproof, warm, and efficient, and they premiered in 1912. Bean dubbed them "The Maine Hunting Shoe." The Maine Hunting Shoe is designed by a hunter who has tramped Maine woods for the past 24 years. Bean promoted his boot as the height of new technology. And yet, the language in his 1920s catalogs and advertisements still referenced moccasins a lot. Light as a moccasin with the swinging protection of a heavy hunting boot. Although many of these early cutting-edge outdoor brands are experimenting with new

• 9:02Avery Trufelman?

  kinds of rubber and material technologies, aesthetically, they cannot let go of this faux indigenous thing.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  There was an interesting jacket. It was produced by a company called Lussberg, Nass and Co. in the 1920s through the 1940s. It is a nod to older technologies and designs, but updated to reflect new uses of materials.

• 9:27Avery Trufelman?

  It was called the Buck's Scane Jacket.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  You can hear in that name, it's a nod to the historical jacket Buckskin, right? But Buck's Scane wasn't produced by killing a buck and then skinning the deer and then sewing that material together into a jacket.

• 9:43Avery Trufelman?

  The Buck's Scane Jacket was made of cotton or wool assembled in a factory and notably covered with a new waterproof coating.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  I can't tell you how well it worked, but that was considered one version of high-tech for the early 20th century, in part because it had a DuPont-produced waterproof coating.

• 10:03Avery Trufelman?

  DuPont, the chemical company that made weapons in World War I, made the high-tech coating on this otherwise Daniel Boone-looking, old-style Buck's Scane Jacket.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  And it includes not just a specific kind of coating that's going to keep water out, but also the trademark of a chemical company that signals that kind of effectiveness.

• 10:24Avery Trufelman?

  Advertisements for the Buck's Scane proudly flaunt DuPont's logo.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  The Buck's Scane one is the first time I see their trademark appear in a clothing advertisement.

• 10:34Avery Trufelman?

  This kind of collaboration will be imitated many, many times in the future, where outdoor clothing will advertise its own materials: a certain kind of rubber, a certain kind of liner, a certain kind of fleece. And many of these materials will make their way into both the outdoor industry and the military. Because they will be scientifically tested and proven.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  That's the most important outcome of the link between the military and outdoor industry is the rise of scientific testing.

• 11:07Avery Trufelman?

  This is what will come to define gear if it's performance tested. It's going to change the whole aesthetic of American outdoor clothing. And it's also going to change what it means to look like an American soldier.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020, discussing every episode of the show The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, who starred on The West Wing as Will Bailey, and Rishakeesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:11Avery Trufelman?

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• 12:54Avery Trufelman?

  Start shopping now at the realreal.com articals. The glasses are green, the color of sea glass you could They are exactly my husband's prescription. They have blue light blocking technology for his computer time, and they were $30. I got them at Zenni. Zenni is an online eyewear shop with so many stylish glasses, prescription and sunglasses, and customizable lens options, all starting at under $30. And Zenni's virtual try-on lets you preview how a frame is gonna look on you before you buy it, so it doesn't feel like a shot in the dark. I feel like most people trying on glasses take pictures of themselves anyway to see how it'll look from the outside. Zenni's tool will help you figure out the right pair effortlessly. I just got my husband these Zenni glasses, and then lo and behold, they have become

• 13:39Avery Trufelman?

  his everyday pair, arguably his signature. Give the gift of Zenni this holiday season. Glasses, sunglasses, whatever they need. Go to zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off, plus free shipping over $65. Styles sell out, so don't wait. That's Z E N N I dot com slash podcast, promo code PODCAST15. Zenni.com slash podcast, code PODCAST15. If you ever have the distinct pleasure of meeting Joshua Kerner, the attorney, layperson, expert in militaria to whom I spoke with for 14 hours, do not mention Major General Robert McGowan Little John. Kerner will go off on a tear.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  Oh, he's just, he's just an asshole.

• 14:24Avery Trufelman?

  Kerner has appointed himself General Little John's nemesis. Not that Kerner ever met Major General Little John personally, no. Little John died long before Kerner was born. This is about something Little John did in 1944.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  There's this meme that The Onion did where it's like, boyfriend is still upset about coup that the CIA did in like 1976. And for me, it's like, boyfriend is still upset about decisions the Quartermaster Corps made in 1944, 45.

• 14:53Avery Trufelman?

  And Kerner's kind of in the minority here. He warned me as we drove to Fort Lee in Virginia to go look at the cool old uniforms in the Quartermaster Archive that we would be confronted face to face with Kerner's enemy.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  You'll see in the museum, near the archive, when we go inside, there's a massive picture of Little John.

• 15:08Avery Trufelman?

  This really makes Kerner so mad. His animosity burns bright and

• 15:13Speaker 04

  I think everybody actually now needs to know how you fucked up.

• 15:16Avery Trufelman?

  And I think, once you know what Little John did, you'll be upset too. Maybe not as upset as Kerner, he made a whole meme page devoted to roasting General Little John. But Little John arguably did make one of the dumbest and most dangerous fashion decisions in US military history. So, at the end of last chapter, we had reached the end of the Philippine-American war. Basically, when President Theodore Roosevelt was like, "This war is getting too gruesome. I'm just calling it off." That was in 1902. Meanwhile, the American Indian wars are continuing across the American West, and there are ongoing colonization attempts in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, which are widely known as the Banana Wars.

• 16:00Avery Trufelman?

  So, war is ongoing in the United States. But if you look at any big American war timeline, they'll tell you the next big, significant American war is World War I, the Great War. The war that is about to be defined by these new, improved, smokeless weapons. A war defined by having to be very far away from each other, having to hide, having to be in trenches, and having to wear a very specific uniform.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  The heavy wool overcoat that reached almost to the knees was part of what the standard military issue was in the US during World War I.

• 16:42Avery Trufelman?

  Rachel Escrow again. World War I was the United States' first time fighting abroad on a large scale in cold, soggy weather. In a long, heavy wool overcoat, if you get wet, you get really wet.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Heavy wool overcoats had limited flexibility.

• 16:59Avery Trufelman?

  These coats were very heavy. It was like carrying around a blanket.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Either they were on, and they were quite warm, or they were off, and you were really cold.

• 17:07Avery Trufelman?

  The heavy wool overcoat was just all or nothing. This was not an advanced or convenient coat for the soldiers. So, after World War I, might have been a good time to recoup, find a better solution for a better military jacket, but then it was the Great Depression, and the size and budget of the military were slashed. So, when World War II comes around, the army is sort of like, "Oh, no."

• 17:31Speaker 02

  The US military had very little cold-weather expertise going into World War II.

• 17:35Avery Trufelman?

  The United States Quartermaster Corps, the department responsible for clothing the troops, was like, There's gotta be something in the middle. We're not going to get rid of this big wool overcoat just yet, but there has to be some sort of intermediary jacket that's not so big and warm. And the man who ultimately takes on the task of developing this military jacket is this French-American business professor named Georges Doryo. But everyone's going to call him George Doryo.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Doryo served for the French military during World War I and then immigrated to the United States. He was working as a business professor at the Harvard Business School.

• 18:17Avery Trufelman?

  George Doryo is most famous for being the inventor of venture capital. Everything I'm about to tell you in this story is just a massive footnote in his life.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  And he knew through his work in the management field, as well as his military background, that he would likely be called on to serve during World War II.

• 18:36Avery Trufelman?

  Knowing he was probably going to be put in charge of some large sprawling enterprise, George Doryo undertakes some work for the Military Planning Division. And sure enough, in 1941, he gets a direct appointment as lieutenant colonel and becomes the chief of the Military Planning Division in the office of the quartermaster general. Essentially, he's a civilian recruit into this machine because the Quartermaster Corps needed the help of someone with Doryo's organizational skills and know-how. They were spinning out.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  The office of the quartermaster general in DC goes, what are we doing here?

• 19:07Avery Trufelman?

  Kerner says the Quartermaster Corps had gotten themselves into a real pickle with the jacket situation. Basically, in trying to solve the heavy wool overcoat problem, they created an even bigger jacket problem. And they brought on Doryo to clean it up. What had happened was this one general, General J.K. Parsons, was like, I've got it. I will make a better alternative to the heavy wool overcoat. Let me do it. I'll design a new jacket. General Parsons sort of took this on as a pet project.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  And the Quartermaster Corps gave him a bunch of money and he bought like 300 different like golfing jackets, members-only style jackets, and chose the parts of each one he liked best. And he sent that to the Quartermaster Corps and was like, this is what I want. And the Quartermaster Corps was like, okay, boss.

• 19:54Avery Trufelman?

  That was pretty much how clothing development worked at the time. A general wanted it, so he got it. And so, this jacket was commonly known as the Parsons jacket, after General Parsons. It really just looked like a zip-up golf jacket.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  So it's a members-only jacket. It's what Paulie Walnuts would use to take someone out in The Sopranos.

• 20:12Avery Trufelman?

  It looked really cool.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  And it's so popular that it's actually issued under armed guard and you have to sign off for it because it's just a rush. It's the thing to have.

• 20:22Avery Trufelman?

  But the problems with the Parsons jacket were glaring. I mean, it's a golf jacket. It's not for fighting.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  It's short. If you lift your arms, it exposes your belly. It makes your kidneys cold.

• 20:32Avery Trufelman?

  Soldiers in Washington State and Alaska immediately complained about its shortcomings.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  The warmth and length issues are fixed in something called the Arctic Field Jacket.

• 20:40Avery Trufelman?

  So there's this new Arctic Edition Field Jacket.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Then the paratroops, they want their own version. The mountain troops want their own version. You get a special jacket for tankers. You just get special jacket after special jacket.

• 20:52Avery Trufelman?

  The Quartermaster Corps could not handle all these special orders for special jackets for each special need and climate.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  And that just doesn't work on a global war where you're having millions of men having niche jackets is just isn't, that's, it's insane.

• 21:08Avery Trufelman?

  So this was the challenge for George Doreo.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  We need a universal jacket for everyone.

• 21:16Avery Trufelman?

  Can you make a jacket for the military that can work all the time, everywhere? And Doreo, instead of doing what had been done before, which was, you know, looking at 300 commercially available jackets or looking at what militaries in other countries were doing, Doreo develops this jacket from first principles. He does scientific testing.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  George Doreo. The sci- That taking a scientific approach to testing through consultation with climatologists, physiologists, geographers and others was the best way to go about determining how to equip what would eventually be a fighting force of 12 million people.

• 21:56Avery Trufelman?

  And in addition to all these scientists are a bunch of consultants from the clothing industry.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  They're all men who worked at, say, Brooks Brothers, or perhaps DuPont, or a woolen mill, for instance.

• 22:08Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, every one and all facets of industry turned to the war effort on a scale that we cannot fathom now. And that included the outdoor industry. The Quartermaster Corps turned to some of the most famous outdoorsmen who had come onto the scene.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Eddie Bauer, L.L. Bean, Harold Hirsch, who owned the company White Stag, were among those who served as civilian consultants advising on things like tent design, or jacket manufacturing, or what sleeping bags ought to look like.

• 22:38Avery Trufelman?

  And it was entirely new that this young, fledgling industry was being taken seriously by the United States government.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  The outdoor industry was represented, probably for the first time in a big way on the national stage.

• 22:52Avery Trufelman?

  These outdoorsmen were asked for their ideas about what to wear, and a number of explorers and alpinists were asked to join the Quartermaster Corps on a cold weather expedition to Mount McKinley in Alaska to test out equipment.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  A lot of the American mountaineers were serving as either civilian consultants, or actually as officers in the Quartermaster Corps, doing the testing work for the development of these kinds of jackets and other pieces of quilting.

• 23:17Avery Trufelman?

  But Doria wanted testing that could get even more exact. Yeah, the Army wanted a jacket that would keep soldiers warm, but how warm? Yeah, they want soldiers to be dry, but how dry? Yeah, it was valuable to know if an experienced outdoorsman thought a particular jacket worked, but how would you know if it worked for the average soldier? The Quartermaster wanted tangible, measurable results that could be calibrated in degrees, in klo, in percentage moisture content, to ensure that you could really adjust and fine tune these jackets. So Dorian looked back at the facilities they had at his old job at Harvard.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  I know that the Harvard Fatigue Lab, which is a physiology lab that had been around for a few decades, was prominent when it came to shaping what the military testing facilities would look like for the Quartermaster Corps.

• 24:09Avery Trufelman?

  The Harvard Fatigue Labs had chambers that could get very cold or very hot for conducting tests in physiology.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  It had been quite common to take, say, a Harvard undergraduate into the laboratory with them on a treadmill and understand, say, changes in skin temperature or levels of sweating.

• 24:27Avery Trufelman?

  But what was new was that Dorian wasn't trying to test the limits of the human body. Dorian and his team were putting test subjects in various military garb to test the clothing.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  You could turn the temperature really low and see how long it took before people shivered uncomfortably. Or desert testing facilities where you could turn the temperature way up. Or wind tunnels where you might shoot a shock of air at a soldier who acted as the test subjects to see how much they could withstand.

• 24:55Avery Trufelman?

  Dorian and the Quartermaster Corps worked with at least four different university laboratories and their own climatic research lab. But they soon realized there was a flaw in these experiments. These test subject soldiers.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  They were too subjective because they might say, "I feel very cold," and that's really hard to represent scientifically on a scale that is numerically universalizable. So they developed a copper man.

• 25:21Avery Trufelman?

  The Quartermaster Corps developed a dummy.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  A heated mannequin made out of copper with lots of wires attached to it.

• 25:28Avery Trufelman?

  And they would put the copper man in, say, a jacket to get an even more exact and accurate understanding of how clothing felt on the human body. Or rather, on Chauncey's body. That was the copper man's name. His name was Chauncey.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  But it wasn't just one Chauncey. Often, the producers would create 10 or 15 and then send them to different testing facilities.

• 25:49Avery Trufelman?

  With Chauncey, the facts didn't lie. He was covered with sensors.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  And that, the scientists of the military research laboratories believed, would yield more trustworthy and dependable data that they could then use to create the jackets that they wanted to.

• 26:03Avery Trufelman?

  This was George Doreo's era of the Quartermaster, a new era of clothing that was scientific and based on data. Chauncey was warmer in this jacket than that jacket. Chauncey was drier in this parka than that one. Based on this incredible, unprecedented use of garment science, buttressed with input and support from outdoorsmen and consultants, Doreo and the Quartermaster Corps emerged with a brilliant new concept. They found the scientifically proven answer for how to dress outside. There was no one perfect jacket. The answer was layering.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  The laboratories had shown that wearing lots of lighter layers was going to keep soldiers warmer than wearing a smaller set of much heavier layers.

• 26:50Avery Trufelman?

  And you might be like, yeah, layering. I could have told you that.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  This might seem obvious to a modern listener.

• 26:56Avery Trufelman?

  Right? It's like, this is what we all do.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you wear some things underneath and then you put other things on top. And then you can take them on or off, depending on what the temperature looks like outside or if you're hot.

• 27:06Avery Trufelman?

  Layering, we love it.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Layering. It's a good idea.

• 27:09Avery Trufelman?

  This was, in the 1940s, new.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  We talk about the layering principle, like, everyone understands it. But during World War II, most men did not understand the layering principle.

• 27:19Avery Trufelman?

  That's Charles McFarlane, a costume historian and journalist who wrote his master's thesis in part on the development of the field jacket. But you can really see how new the layering principle was because in this field jacket that Charles has from the 1950s, there are lengthy instructions printed on the inside.

• 27:37Speaker 05

  This tag has instructions for how to wear this properly. Number one is, wear as an outer garment in cold, wet climates and intermediate garment in cold, dry climates.

• 27:49Avery Trufelman?

  This field jacket wasn't just a coat. It wasn't just a blazer. It wasn't just a windbreaker. It was a whole system. You could add a liner for warmth, a parka for cold, a rain cover for rain. You could tighten and cinch the drawstring, depending on the layers and the weather.

• 28:06Speaker 05

  For cold weather, button the liner. So there's a liner that goes into this. And they're saying, in cold, dry climates, like the Arctic, you're going to need, like, a parka over this. And then, wear alone in mild weather.

• 28:18Avery Trufelman?

  But if you undid all the attachments and stripped it all down... At its core was just an olive green cotton sateen jacket.

• 28:28Speaker 05

  When you close your eyes, you picture an army jacket. This is that.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  An army green military jacket.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  Cotton green jacket with four large cargo pockets.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Two chest pocket and then two pockets lower down at the hip.

• 28:40Speaker 05

  About hip length.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  With adjustable cuffs.

• 28:43Avery Trufelman?

  I suppose we now just think of this as like the classic army field jacket. But in its day, this was the base of a high-tech modular all-weather dressing system. And once it had been perfected in laboratories and in outdoor field tests, the design was further refined in actual battlefields.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  They send well over 1,000 jackets to a battle in Italy.

• 29:08Avery Trufelman?

  The Anzio Beachhead was in a stalemate phase. In late March of 1944, a battalion of men is given these new jackets to try out.

• 29:15Speaker 05

  And then they collect them at the end of a two-week period and conduct interviews, really asking these guys what stuff they like and what stuff they don't.

• 29:22Avery Trufelman?

  On the whole, the guys really liked this new jacket. As one soldier said in the report, "This uniform makes us feel like soldiers. The old one didn't." Still, some soldiers give feedback, like they can't fit their meal rations, their K rations, in the front pocket of these new field jackets.

• 29:38Speaker 05

  They enlarge the pocket ever so slightly to allow it to be buttoned closed while the K ration's inside.

• 29:44Avery Trufelman?

  The pockets are really important because in World War II, soldiers are living out of their pockets. They are loaded down with stuff.

• 29:52Speaker 05

  These men in World War II are, you know, living outdoors for weeks at a time. They sleep in holes that they dig, and they don't change their clothes. And they have to carry everything on their backs that they need for their livelihood.

• 30:03Avery Trufelman?

  And all these demands fell upon the jacket. It depended on the gear.

• 30:09Speaker 05

  There are quartermaster observers being sent into the field looking to see how men are wearing their stuff. They're really thinking about the well-being of the average soldier.

• 30:20Avery Trufelman?

  So this is the first time American military dress is looking towards its own soldiers for feedback. This uniform is not about what some general wants. It's not about emulating some foreign military power. This is the sartorial embodiment of a democratic army. It is designing in the name of pure science, pure pragmatism. This jacket is really revolutionary. Every other military in the world is still fighting in heavy wool overcoats. They're not doing scientific testing. They're not practicing the layering principle. And the United States is going all in. They're deploying this completely new looking thing at mass scale. It's really bold. And this resulting jacket was called the M1943.

• 31:05Avery Trufelman?

  M standing for model, 1943 was the year it came out. And the M43 was unlike anything most Americans had ever experienced outside of avid hunters and mountaineers. In May of 1944, The New York Times reported how well that test in Anzio, Italy had gone, and how the M43 had, quote, "a splendid effect on the morale of the men who wore it." George D'Orio and the Quartermaster Corps really did it. They created the perfect scientifically proven, warm, flexible, movable jacket for all environments. And now, all they had to do was get these M43 jackets over to the brave boys in the European Theater of Operations quickly before the winter came.

• 31:49Avery Trufelman?

  But this is where Kerner's nemesis, General Littlejohn, comes in.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  He was an annoying dick that made more suffering than needed to really exist.

• 32:00Avery Trufelman?

  General Littlejohn is like, "No, I don't like the M43 jackets."

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Because Littlejohn is just a fucking idiot.

• 32:08Avery Trufelman?

  This is why Kerner will never forgive Littlejohn for what he did in 1944. It's actually quite bad. I'll tell you about it after the break.

• 32:21Avery Trufelman?

  I always find that whenever I invite people over, I suddenly realize all the things I need. Like, oh, I need an ice bucket, or a cake server, or a punchbowl. Don't wait until after the party to figure out what would have been useful. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home so you can host and celebrate without the stress. Wayfair has thousands of products across every style and budget. Whether you're upgrading an appliance, or transforming your home in a new style, or just really getting into the holiday. There's something for everyone. Products are hand vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection system, and there are more than 20 million verified five-star reviews from users, featuring

• 33:04Avery Trufelman?

  customer photos and honest reviews, so you can truly find what's the right fit for your home. Wayfair has literally everything imaginable. I recently purchased a cocktail shaker from Alessi, which is so chic and stylish. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 33:33Avery Trufelman?

  I first heard about The RealReal, I think, a decade ago. Suddenly, it was this place where you could get Prada pumps and Burberry jackets and Gucci handbags for a song. Like, I recently got this vintage 90s Yoji Yamamoto skirt that I wear constantly. The RealReal is adding thousands and thousands of items every single day, so it really does still feel like a treasure hunt, even though it has all the convenience of shopping online. And I periodically use it to clean out my closet. They make it so easy. The RealReal sends a representative to my tiny apartment to pick up my things and assess them for me, and then it's done. Money just appears in my account. The RealReal is the most trusted name in authenticated luxury resale.

• 34:14Avery Trufelman?

  With over 10,000 new arrivals daily, no one does resale like The RealReal. And now, get $25 off your first purchase when you go to the realreal.com articals. That's the realreal.com articals to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at the realreal.com articals. The internet can be a confusing, cacophonous place, especially when you're trying to figure out anything about clothes. There's so many branded, partnered sponsorship, fake reviews. It's really hard to know what's real and what's not. But the true forum for the internet is and always has been Reddit. What do you wear to work? What do you wear to move to a new place, or a pregnancy, or a new stage of life?

• 34:59Avery Trufelman?

  The place to turn to is Reddit. When it comes to clothing, you need to Talk to people. You need someone with a body, with arms and legs who moves through the world and understands particular contexts. Reddit can help you understand clothes in the context of real bodies, real lives, and the way clothing operates in the world. That's why I turn to my favorite subreddit, r/buyitforlife. If I'm thinking of making the investment in an expensive piece, I want to find out from other people who've already tried it before me what it's really like. I want to know what happens after 30 wears, three washes, one unfortunate coffee incident, a full year in someone's closet. I want the full rundown, complete with photos of the fraying, the repairs, and the surprise winners. This subreddit has very strong opinions about stitching, and I respect it.

• 35:43Avery Trufelman?

  On Reddit, find fashion advice built for real bodies, real budgets, and real lives. Download the Reddit app today. There's this ongoing fallacy that outdoorsy people don't care about how they look, but it's getting preposterous. Last May, I snapped a picture of a Patagonia storefront where it said, in big serif font, "Fashion is none of our business," as though that company's design team didn't have to submit a color trend report that quarter. Please.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  One of the ethoses of the outdoor world been, "We're not about looking good, it's all about what works."

• 36:18Avery Trufelman?

  That is, of course, Rachel Escroce. And one would think that in wartime, while marching for days on end, killing, surviving, that one would think nothing at all of style.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  However, the Quartermaster Corps representatives would be the first to say that how a particular item looked was really important to acceptance, and therefore important to function.

• 36:42Avery Trufelman?

  Because it will determine if a given garment will actually be worn.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Because if soldiers didn't accept the look and feel of a particular piece, they might undermine the entire system that had been so carefully proven to be effective in research laboratories. So, style, the look of the goods, is crucial.

• 37:02Avery Trufelman?

  And a certain kind of aesthetics were very important for General Robert McGowan, Little John.

• 37:07Speaker 05

  General Littlejohn was the Quartermaster Chief of the ETO, or the European Theater of Operations.

• 37:12Avery Trufelman?

  That's journalist Charles McFarlane again.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  Littlejohn had been in uniform since, basically, he was in his 20s.

• 37:19Avery Trufelman?

  General Littlejohn was a career soldier. He went to West Point. He had risen through the ranks. He was friends with Dwight Eisenhower. He had friends in high places. He worked his way up to Quartermaster General of the European Theater.

• 37:30Speaker 05

  At that point, that's really just England is before the invasion of France.

• 37:34Avery Trufelman?

  Littlejohn was in charge of what soldiers stationed in the European Theater would use and eat and wear. So even before Doreo was recruited to help the Quartermaster with their uniform problem, Littlejohn does not like where uniform development is trending. He did not like that golf jacket, members-only look-in Parsons jacket. He did not like all those other field jackets. He did not like this trend. He did not think a uniform was something that was supposed to be tossed on easily.

• 38:02Speaker 05

  He really thought that the aim of a uniform should be to look crisp and soldierly.

• 38:08Avery Trufelman?

  To Littlejohn, the crisp and suit-like appearance of the uniform was vitally important. This was, to him, a career soldier, the way to deal with an army of draftees.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  To Littlejohn, the uniform was one of the most important tools to take this kind of unformed rabble of civilians and turn them into a fighting force. You need to look like a soldier to be a soldier. And part of that was the right creases, was the right polished buttons, and a very trim look.

• 38:38Avery Trufelman?

  Even before Doreo gets on the scene, before the M43 is invented, back in the era where the Quartermaster Corps is like, ah, there are too many specialty jackets for all these specialized needs, General Littlejohn is like, I will solve the problem of the perfect general-use jacket.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  And he also doesn't like that there's a different field jacket and a different dress code.

• 38:56Avery Trufelman?

  That's Kerner again, Littlejohn's self-proclaimed generations-removed nemesis.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  Littlejohn's like, I have my own design. We should adopt my jacket.

• 39:05Avery Trufelman?

  Littlejohn was like, we have to go back to basics. And Little John designs a jacket that looks almost formal.

• 39:13Speaker 05

  It's a thick wool with two breast pockets with waist adjusters to cinch it in.

• 39:18Avery Trufelman?

  A spiffy wool suit that cuts high, right at the waist. Admittedly, it is very smart looking and cuts a very dashing profile, especially if your upper body is naturally shaped like a triangle.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  It was closely aligned with the English military uniforms that Little John was seeing when he was stationed there.

• 39:36Avery Trufelman?

  These wool jackets were tight-fitting and trim because, of course, you didn't have to layer much under them. Like, the collar is designed for a tie, not for keeping rain out.

• 39:45Speaker 05

  But that's his idea, right? This is the field jacket we need.

• 39:48Avery Trufelman?

  Little John's jacket is officially known as the ETO jacket, as in the European Theater of Operations.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  These ETO jackets are being made in pretty much the same factories that are making British battle dress jackets.

• 39:59Avery Trufelman?

  The ETO jacket was the precursor to what was known as the Ices jacket because General Little John's buddy, General Eisenhower, took on a version of the cut-trimmed ETO jacket as his signature.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  So he's testing that in parallel with the 43 jacket being developed.

• 40:19Avery Trufelman?

  And then, when Major General Little John finally, actually, catches sight of some M43 jackets for the very first time, he just hates them.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Comes in and is like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're adopting this thing?

• 40:34Avery Trufelman?

  Little John is determined to stop the M43 field jacket.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  It seems to create this unreasonable hatred of the 43 jacket that is just truly deranged.

• 40:47Avery Trufelman?

  Little John refuses to let representatives of the Office of the Quartermaster General into his Theater of Operations. He's like, don't bring these M43 things in here.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  For sure, many generals had opinions about the jackets the people around them ought to be wearing.

• 41:03Avery Trufelman?

  While some generals, mostly the career soldiers who had come out of West Point, might prefer Little John's more formal, proper, fitted ETO jacket, the majority of soldiers probably preferred the more comfortable, scientifically proven M43 jacket.

• 41:18Speaker 05

  And they basically found a growing divide between two factions within the US Army.

• 41:23Avery Trufelman?

  Teams were developing. ETO jacket versus M43. Little John versus Doreo. Style versus function. Okay, that last face-off is a bit reductive because D'Orio and a lot of soldiers would argue that there's a lot of style in the M43.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  A 43 jacket that's clean and good was oftentimes used as a casual sports coat.

• 41:47Avery Trufelman?

  And Littlejohn and his generals would argue that there's a particular kind of function in the ETO jacket.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  I could just use this jacket for both combat and dress. It's more efficient. It's great.

• 41:58Avery Trufelman?

  Out in the field, in the European theater, Littlejohn is offered shipments of the new M43 field jackets with their windproof and waterproof layers. And he's like, "No. No thank you."

• 42:11Speaker 05

  General Littlejohn, basically at every turn, is refusing shipments of 1943 field jackets.

• 42:18Avery Trufelman?

  Littlejohn is the quartermaster general in the region, so it's not anyone's place to question him. But in letters written to Littlejohn in 1944, when it's clear the war is about to last through the winter, you can read letters from quartermasters under Littlejohn who are clearly starting to panic. They don't have the right supplies.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  And the quartermaster of the 3rd Army is like, "I know you think that it's not that cold, but actually, if you look at it, it is maybe cold, so please don't get mad at me," which, and the way it's written, is so deferential and like roundabout, you kind of tell like what sort of office personality Littlejohn is. And it's like, "Oh, he's just, he's just an asshole."

• 43:00Avery Trufelman?

  D'Orio is begging Littlejohn to just please swallow his pride and just take the M43 jackets.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  Littlejohn, he's getting these letters from D'Orio going like, "You need to start ordering 43 field jackets and other cold weather uniform items like now, because it takes three to four months for it to get on a boat and to get to you at the quickest. You should have been doing it yesterday." And Littlejohn is just dawdling, and he's requesting crazy stuff. So like, there are 43 jackets in the New York port of embarkation, ready to be sent to the ETO.

• 43:36Avery Trufelman?

  And Littlejohn still is like, "No." I don't want those. Those are tacky.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  He actually asked for inguets instead of 43 field jackets, dress coats, and issues them out to the 80th Infantry Division.

• 43:49Avery Trufelman?

  This is to fight Nazis in the winter.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  And it's not until mid to late October of 44 that he starts ordering the 43 jacket, which means November, December, January, that most of these are not going to be arriving until the end of January, just like too late. Little John procrastinated because he was obstinate and angry and didn't really prepare right. So you have this natural experiment of was Doryo correct or is Little John correct?

• 44:11Avery Trufelman?

  Who ultimately wins?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  I can tell you who ultimately loses, and that would be the individual US soldiers whose bodies are the site of these high-level battles about the correct equipping of the military and different notions of what scientific testing or decision-making about uniforms ought to look like.

• 44:30Avery Trufelman?

  These poor soldiers who did not necessarily want to be in Europe in the dead of winter were shivering in their wet wool suits and leather boots that got bogged down with water, catching pneumonia and frostbite, and there were some truly disgusting consequences to not clothing soldiers properly. This is a little content warning. Charles McFarlane is about to talk about a nasty consequence of Little John's negligence.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Men are losing toes. Skin is coming off with the sock. And when you look at the rates of trench foot, frostbite, all of these things are being recorded at a much higher level in the units in Little John's purview.

• 45:04Avery Trufelman?

  And Americans at home were getting wind of this because soldiers were writing letters to their families.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  Ma, Pa, I'm fighting in combat. There's snow on the ground. I don't have this. I don't have that. The parents then write their congressman, then the congressman's writing Doryo going, what the hell's going on?

• 45:19Avery Trufelman?

  So even though Doryo's scientifically proven layering principle was absolutely correct, Little John's ego prevented its implementation. And so a lot of people had to suffer before it actually worked. This was a catastrophe, and it was known in the press as the cold weather crisis.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  It's becoming a massive news thing with front-page stories of the New York Times.

• 45:44Avery Trufelman?

  This was a legitimately massive scandal. Whoa, what's this?

• 45:48Speaker 04

  This is the Washington Post, February 18, 1945. A full-page story.

• 45:55Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, it's unbelievable. Like giant pictures of boots and stuff. This is page four. And not the style section either.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  With illustrations, talking about the pluses and minuses, the ideal outfit.

• 46:06Avery Trufelman?

  This was a big explosive expose, very much pointed at Little John. And all this widespread anger in these investigations from the New York Times and the Washington Post led to a military investigation looking into who was responsible for the cold weather crisis. And the resulting report revealed nothing. No one at all was responsible for this. Who was to say who's at fault? It doesn't get pinned on Little John at all. Little John gets off the hook entirely. And the only logical explanation for this is that it's very nice to have a friend like General Eisenhower.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  What happens is Eisenhower, and I have the memo for this, puts a press freeze on any stories dealing with the cold weather uniform crisis in January of 45. Just because it's bad morale. Bad morale, it makes it look bad back home and stuff like that. It's like, nobody could file stories on this. What it looks like is he ran policy interference for a friend of his.

• 47:03Avery Trufelman?

  Little John continues to spend the rest of his life trying to clean his own record and deny any wrongdoing.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  He's writing to historians like in the 60s and 70s, asking them to do a new edit of the official history of quartermaster operations because he thinks they're not nice enough to him and they make him look bad. Just real like, everybody knows the type of guy that this is. The thing that makes this story so enjoyable is he's so unlikable.

• 47:27Avery Trufelman?

  And yet, Little John's efforts to clear his name eventually paid off.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  Because he played the long game at the alumni dinners, essentially.

• 47:35Avery Trufelman?

  Little John stuck around. He showed up to all the quartermaster officer graduations, all the ceremonies, all the parties. He became a beloved elder.

• 47:45Speaker 04

  And that's why there's a massive picture of Little John you'll see in the museum near the archive when we go inside. That's so funny. There's a huge picture of him, and he was just wrong.

• 47:54Avery Trufelman?

  And Kerner doesn't want anyone to forget it.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  You lost. You were wrong. Your side of history was wrong. You are his nightmare. I am his nightmare.

• 48:04Avery Trufelman?

  And the reason there's not a giant portrait of George D'Orio in the Quartermaster Archive It's because Doryo didn't care about a military legacy. He got out of there.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  And it's like, fuck all you guys. I'm going back to business. This is terrible. I hate all of it.

• 48:18Avery Trufelman?

  Again, this man invented venture capital. Don't worry, he was fine.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  But there was a lot of people that were kind of brought up under him and appreciated that sort of research and dedication.

• 48:27Avery Trufelman?

  Ultimately, Doryo's approach won because everyone is operating under his ideology, that comfort and protection is more important to the soldier than formality and perfection. And yes, all of us, including the military, now take the layering system entirely for granted. But that is, in part, because of the absolute ubiquity and cultural dominance of the M43 jacket. The M43 field jacket starts the template for a design that continues to evolve. There's a version of something that looks like the field jacket in almost every war that follows.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  We can see different versions of the M43 jacket through the 1950s and 1960s in Korea and Vietnam.

• 49:11Avery Trufelman?

  And this style of jacket, something that looked like the M43, seeped out into the civilian market through the outdoor industry. Rachel S. Gross saw many of the outdoor industry professionals who had advised on the M43, like Harold Hirsch, the owner of White Stag, start to incorporate elements of the design into his products.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  We do know that there was a direct line between what he was seeing in the research laboratories at the Quartermaster Corps and then what kinds of civilian jackets appeared in his catalogs immediately thereafter. In other words, I can see the military-style jackets that Hirsch was selling by 1944 and 1945, a look that's really similar to the M43 jacket.

• 49:51Avery Trufelman?

  A lot of the outdoor companies who had consulted with the military started to sell their own civilian spins on the M43, all different versions of cotton, sateen, hip-length jackets with drawstrings and four pockets.

• 50:05Avery Trufelman?

  It was just objectively a great design. You can still see it as a template on jackets all around you. But the biggest legacy of the M43 and all its accompanying layers was how it was developed.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  It also shows that having like true, rigorous, scientific testing is oftentimes better, almost always better, than having some random auteur guiding things.

• 50:29Avery Trufelman?

  Testing, testing, testing. Opinion testing, field testing, lab testing. This has become the guiding principle in gear, which is why the military's clothing testing facility, to this day, bears Doria's name. We're going right to Doria. And what is Doria? Doria is our climatic chambers. Here at the Army Laboratories at Natick, Massachusetts, which the Quartermaster Corps first established in 1953, there's a heat chamber, a cold chamber, and various testing sites. And it is a very novel and unique research facility. There are very few like it in the world. That's my guide, Chief Public Affairs Officer David Acetta.

• 51:10Avery Trufelman?

  We can control, you can see the monitor there, the temperature, the wind speed, and the relative humidity. We have snowmaking capability in here. Does it actually look like snow? Yeah, it's a snow machine. The military, as it did in the 1940s, continues to not solely rely on humans. We're gonna go up and see Maddie now. She leads our mannequin work. They still use mannequins to test clothes, just like they did with Chauncey the Copperman. It's just that mannequin technology has gotten so much more elaborate. The mannequin does a lot more work.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  This is an environmental chamber where we house one of our mannequins.

• 51:45Avery Trufelman?

  Maddie Polly Bogan, biomedical research fellow at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, introduced me to the life-size doll she spends all day dressing and undressing.

• 51:55Speaker 06

  Then if you want to take a look.

• 51:57Avery Trufelman?

  Of course.

• 51:57Speaker 06

  His name is Andy, our dynamic verbal mannequin.

• 52:02Avery Trufelman?

  Terrifying.

• 52:03Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 52:03Avery Trufelman?

  Andy looks like he's being tortured. He's hanging from a pole in a gray lycra hood that has only a hole for his mouth. He's got a riot of tube guts spilling out of his stomach. It's quite macabre. Why does he have a hood on?

• 52:17Speaker 06

  This is actually for, it's called evaporative resistance testing or wet testing, and it mimics sweat.

• 52:23Avery Trufelman?

  Like this fabric mimics sweat?

• 52:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:25Avery Trufelman?

  This mannequin, Andy, evaluates heat and moisture content and really almost anything. He's way more advanced than Chauncey ever was. Matty puts Andy in jacket after jacket, glove after glove, boot after boot.

• 52:41Speaker 06

  And then we'll input those resistance values into thermoregulatory models.

• 52:47Avery Trufelman?

  So I asked what exactly thermoregulatory models meant, and I thought I'd be shown a series of numbers and charts. And instead, I was shown a software that looked like a dress-up doll. There was an image of a soldier, and you could scroll through images of different military-issue clothes and put a little outfit on him.

• 53:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you can see here, we have all of these.

• 53:13Avery Trufelman?

  Oh my god!

• 53:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you can dress him.

• 53:16Avery Trufelman?

  It's like Cher's closet.

• 53:18Speaker 06

  I know.

• 53:18Avery Trufelman?

  That's so funny.

• 53:19Speaker 06

  I know, isn't it cool?

• 53:20Avery Trufelman?

  It really was like the military's version of the closet from Clueless, if Cher was heading out to sub-40 Arctic tundra. Wait, but this is not like a public thing? Like, this is not anything that anyone can play with?

• 53:32Speaker 06

  No, it's not.

• 53:33Avery Trufelman?

  The public affairs officer, David Acetta, chimed in here. So this is a tool for commanders to figure out what uniforms their troops should be wearing for a given operation or mission to provide them with the best protection but optimal performance. And this Clueless Closet Simulator helps avoid anything remotely similar to the cold-weather crisis from ever happening again. You model exactly what you'll need on this little avatar, so you, the commander, can be sure to order it in time. So it's head, upper body, hands, legs, feet, and all the different options?

• 54:03Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 54:04Avery Trufelman?

  This is fun.

• 54:05Speaker 06

  I know, isn't it?

• 54:05Avery Trufelman?

  This software is the ultimate triumph of the layering principle. It fundamentally relies on it. Wait, it's wearing like multiple things on top of each other?

• 54:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:14Avery Trufelman?

  Like it's wearing two gloves?

• 54:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:16Avery Trufelman?

  Okay.

• 54:17Speaker 06

  You can see there's three...

• 54:18Avery Trufelman?

  Three pants?

• 54:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, three pants, I think, four shirts, and then two...

• 54:24Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 54:24Avery Trufelman?

  And then with whatever combination of clothes you choose, you see the resulting numbers.

• 54:29Speaker 06

  And then you press results and it will give you times for cold injury. So frostbite, hypothermia, and then you can even-

• 54:38Avery Trufelman?

  So these boots are not the best for frostbite is what this is saying?

• 54:41Speaker 06

  Probably not.

• 54:42Avery Trufelman?

  Although this felt kind of fun and abstract in the moment, when I stepped back for a second, I was like, wait, what cold weather war is all of this anticipating? Is it sort of like, oh, every year here's the new, here's the new upgraded edition? Or is it like, oh, there's a new conflict here? Yeah, how do you- It depends on operational needs. Okay. So we have renewed focus on the Arctic. So we're looking at new gloves. Are we evaluating new technologies? That's about as much information as I got. Whatever may happen in the Arctic, we're preparing for it. Testing, testing, testing. That's the law of gear. That's what makes gear gear.

• 55:25Avery Trufelman?

  Not only for soldiers, for civilians too.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  We have a field testing team that comes and grabs their samples here to actually take them out into the field and test.

• 55:33Avery Trufelman?

  Wait, that's our job?

• 55:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:34Avery Trufelman?

  This is Scott Moser, Creative Brand Director at REI. Other than the fact that REI HQ is decorated with like canoes and backpacks and stuff, it really looks like all the other high fashion clothing companies I've visited. They even have the massive vision boards with photos of last season's Paris Fashion Week. Scott, this is crazy. This is REI. I like, I didn't know you were this fashion minded.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you know, we love it. Like, I think oftentimes people are surprised when I tell them like, we look at all the runway shows.

• 56:03Avery Trufelman?

  Really?

• 56:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure.

• 56:05Avery Trufelman?

  See, fashion is none of our business. Get out of here. But the thing that was absolutely unlike a fashion company was that at REI, there is a laboratory.

• 56:14Speaker 04

  We have tons of lab testing in there, including a cold room. And we have a rain room. We have a mannequin that's-

• 56:22Avery Trufelman?

  Fitted with sensors.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 56:24Avery Trufelman?

  Testing has become the ultimate mark of quality and outdoor brands promise that they've thoroughly pushed their wares to the absolute limit. Sometimes this is true, sometimes this is not. Like, I talked to companies that contract out the testing at the manufacturing level. But at a place like REI, testing is a point of pride. Companies like REI aim to prove scientifically the lengths their gear can go. How warm, how dry, how UV resistant.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  We're really focused on- ...quality, and we've done enough testing to know there's a difference.

• 56:54Avery Trufelman?

  It is, perhaps, a natural extension of the expertise Abercrombie & Fitch's flagship store once guaranteed in its salesmen, but now baked directly into the design of a product itself.

• 57:10Avery Trufelman?

  And in the aftermath of the Second World War, companies like REI weren't just selling gear with military-level testing, they were selling actual military gear.

• 57:22Speaker 04

  As early as 1944, REI offered Army steel frame packs, like literally Army packs, Army pup tents, Army crampons, and Army overmitts. So we actually sold those in the store.

• 57:34Avery Trufelman?

  Two civilians, though, like not to the Army.

• 57:36Speaker 04

  Exactly, two civilians. Literal Army stuff that we were selling.

• 57:40Avery Trufelman?

  It was surplus Army stuff.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. Surplus Army, like, we weren't having them manufacture it, but it was surplus stuff.

• 57:46Avery Trufelman?

  Selling off military surplus helped REI and many other young post-war outdoor companies stock their shelves. It was a direct line from George D'Orio to companies we know and love today. But how did these outdoor companies get this military gear? I'll tell you next chapter.

• 58:14Avery Trufelman?

  Articles of Interest is by Avery Trufelman. But the first person to hear my messy first edit and read my scripts is my editor on this project, Alison Behringer. And right after her comes my guardrail, the costume historian, Charles McFarlane, who is currently flying off to do a World War II reenactment. My fact checker is the mighty Yasmin Alsayad. The music is by Ray Royal. Lullatone and theme songs are always by Sasami. Engineering, mixing, mastering, and finessing by the patient and kind Jocelyn Gonzalez and her team at PRX. Huge thank you to Chase Anderson, Clint Humphrey, and the Outdoor Recreation Archive at Utah State University, along with the Quartermaster Archive at Fort Lee, and to

• 58:55Avery Trufelman?

  the author, Rahawa Hailey. Thank you to Radiotopia for being my podcasting partners, and thank you to Drew Haupt for being my life partner. And thank you for listening. Thank you very much. Would you like to see images of Andy the Mannequin? Do you have any questions? There's a place to reach out and to learn more, and it is articlesofinterest.substack.com.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O O dot com. That's O D O O dot com. Radiotopia.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  From PRX.