Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

Even after the surrender of Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945, the Quartermaster Corps kept producing supplies because the war was still raging in the Pacific.

In her series, Avery talks to a historian about this very moment, and we're just going to play a little bit here.

But in August of 1945, the war came to a surprisingly abrupt end after the devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

All of a sudden, Avery explains, the U.S.

military had a huge new problem.

All that frenetic production meant they now had a massive oversupply of clothing and gear just sitting around.

And how did the military decide to solve this problem of all of this surplus stuff on their hands?

So the army surplus store was kind of like the Uniqlo or H&M of the 1950s?

And in addition to helping clothe a new generation of American consumers, Avery says this massive surge of Army surplus also served to turbocharge a nascent outdoors industry.

They rode the wave of the surplus.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Which brings us to the second chapter in the story of the military's influence on everyday style.

By 1965, the United States had entered yet another major war, the Vietnam War.

And Avery says the Quartermaster Corps made a major update to their layered jacket system.

The new model, called the M65, had the same classic olive green color and a similar array of pockets on the front.

But it also had new features, like velcro sleeve straps and a collar with a stowaway hood.

And many of those updated M65 jackets eventually found their way into the army surplus ecosystem.

Pretty soon, these iconic military jackets were showing up in the counterculture —

People like John Lennon and Jane Fonda were seen wearing things like the M65 jacket.

You'd see anti-war protesters sporting the exact same jackets their contemporaries were wearing on the front lines in Vietnam, just this time with a peace sign on the back.