The Language of Clothing

[Janner52]

Richard, I cannot disagree with you.
There are many variations of the colour khaki as used by the British army. I understand it was initially used by the army in India and found to be suitable as a general camouflage colour. I would guess that a darker version was found more suitable for the European environment of WW1. OR’s uniforms were factory produced and, as you mentioned, came from many different production lines which would result in slight colour and design variations. This despite the War Office retaining a “Sealed Pattern” for all items of uniform and equipment. Officer’s uniforms were tailor made by regimentally appointed tailors and over time some regiments had different versions of khaki approved for their officers’ uniforms. This continued until around 10 years ago, when uniforms for all ranks became an issue item, in a standard, and slightly different version of khaki.
Even in the 1960s when we were issued two sets of khaki No 2 dress you couldn’t mix the jackets and trousers as the tiny colour difference would be obvious.
As regards the stone shirts, I seem to recall that they were supplied to the Royal Marines for wear with their Lovat Green uniforms. They were also supplied to the army for wear in warm weather climates. The original ones had a slight grey appearance as per the photo. The khaki No 2 shirts issued to the army were more like the later stone shirts.
Khaki has always been a generic term, within the British Army, to describe the many shades of “khaki” used to make up our khaki uniform.
This still doesn’t explain the current use of the word khaki, by outdoor clothing retailers, to describe olive green, which was the colour of the woollen jerseys issued to us since the 1970s.