British Army Uniform and the First World War

Jane Tynan offers new perspectives on the cultural history of the First World War by examining the clothing worn by British combatants on the western front. Khaki emerges as a significant part of war experience, which embodied gender, social class and ethnicity, impacted the tailoring trade and became a touchstone for pacifist resistance.

'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

Jane Tynan is a Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, London. She has published on aspects of art, design, fashion and the body.