Avre Friday Briefing #62

Batch No. 3 — Shipping from 5th June

The Batch No. 3 Denim Shawl Collar Shirts are currently going through the wash cycle, which is the final stage before they're ready to ship. As we covered in a recent Briefing, all denim starts life raw. Raw denim is stiff, un-shrunk and not yet the finished article. The pre-washing process runs the garments through a series of enzyme cycles, each one working on the indigo dye to soften the handfeel and bring out the lighter weft beneath. The result is the deep colour with visible fleck that you'll have seen in the product images.

Once they're out the other side of the wash, we'll start packing and shipping from 5th June. 

A Short History of Battledress

By 1937, the British Army had a problem. The Service Dress uniform it had worn since the early 1900s was fine for parades. It was not fine for crawling through mud, climbing in and out of vehicles, or doing much of anything useful in a modern mechanised war.
The solution, when it arrived, was borrowed from an unlikely source: the ski slopes. The new Battledress — a short, fitted blouse worn over high-waisted trousers, both in khaki wool serge — took its cues from the civilian ski suits of the 1930s. Less restrictive, warmer when wet, and better suited to the cramped interiors of tanks and trucks. Forward-curved sleeves made it comfortable to shoulder a rifle or grip a steering wheel. Map pockets, concealed buttons, ankle tabs. It was a uniform designed around what soldiers actually did.

An example of a 1930s woollen ski suit, clearly similar to the later design of the Battledress

Not everyone was convinced. One Guards major, upon being told to wear it, reportedly declared:

"I don't mind dying for my country, but I'm not going to die dressed like a third-rate chauffeur."

He wore it anyway.

The design evolved quickly under wartime pressure. The 1940 Pattern — which is the basis for our Batch No. 4 — introduced a lined collar and a slightly closer cut. Two years later the 1942 Austerity Pattern stripped out the pocket pleats and exposed the buttons entirely, saving cloth at the cost of a cleaner silhouette. By the time the Allies landed in Normandy, most soldiers were in some variant of Battledress, though the earlier patterns stayed in circulation until stocks ran out.

A 1940's pattern Battledress blouse. The pleated pockets, concealed buttons and finer material were all changed in the later austerity version (below).

1940s Pattern Battledress blouse - austerity or utility pattern

Its influence spread further than most people realise. The design caught the attention of General Eisenhower, who liked it so much it became the basis for the American M1944 jacket — still one of the most recognisable military garments of the 20th century.

General Eisenhower wearing his M44 jacket, with some Allied commanders following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender at Reims

Post-war, Australia, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands all fielded their own versions. Britain used Battledress as its standard uniform into the 1960s.

Getting our hands on an original

When we started developing Batch No. 4, the first thing we needed was an original 1940 Pattern to work from. Fortunately, James has one. Several, in fact. His collection of wartime clothing and memorabilia is, to put it diplomatically, extensive — and having access to an actual example meant we could study the construction detail in person rather than working from photographs. That kind of reference is invaluable when authenticity is the whole point.

Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Arthur Montague Browning in a specially tailored battledress blouse with faced lapels.

 

Why merino?

As we covered last week, Batch No. 4 is an Officer's Cut, which gives us a little more latitude in fabric choice. The original serge was chosen for durability and cost at scale — qualities that made sense when you were clothing an army. For a jacket made in a run of 100, we could do something different. Merino wool gives us the same warmth and drape as the original, with a soft handle that improves with wear. 

We're only making 100 pieces of Batch No. 4 as that's all the parachute silk we have available. If you'd like to know more about Batch No. 4, head to the product page. 

From WW2 HQ — Al Aboard HMS Belfast

This week Al stepped aboard HMS Belfast for a look at the ship's "kill chain" — the extraordinary sequence of systems, people and split-second decisions required to detect a target and put a shell on it up to 14 miles away.

With Imperial War Museum curator Rob Rumble, Al works his way through the whole process: from the open bridge where a lookout first spots a target, down into the armoured box housing the Admiralty Fire Control Table — a mechanical computer the size of a mixing desk, staffed by Royal Marines, that calculated exactly where to aim given wind speed, the enemy's course and speed, and the ship's own heading. Then into the shell rooms, and finally into the gun turrets themselves, where 27 men per turret could put eight rounds a minute into the air.

The detail on the cordite rooms is amazing. Deeper in the ship than the shell rooms, with stopcocks that could flood the whole compartment if things went wrong — with the men still inside. The sailors working down there, apparently, found it best not to think about it.

Al also gets into B Turret, currently being restored by a two-person conservation team, and manages to depress one of the guns by hand. It takes considerably more effort than expected. Watch it on the WW2 HQ YouTube channel.