
i mentioned the m-65 jacket last week and how i wanted one. i ended up ordering the jacket from the army surplus site i mentioned. it came this weekend and i couldn’t have been more excited to throw it on, and then i threw it on. it was huge. i took it off and checked the size again. it was definitely a medium. i looked in the mirror one more time. the sleeves seemed to hit in the right places, but the jacket swallowed me. my wife even asked me why i insisted on wearing clothes that made me look frumpy. she had a point. i looked stupid. i began to think of the fatigue jacket i saw at j. crew and how i wondered if it might be a better fit, so i went to the mall and tried it on. the medium fit me perfectly. it was snug in the right parts and actually looked nice.
i’ve always been a hater of the unauthentic. if i was going to get an m-65 jacket, i was going to get the real mccoy. i didn’t want some designers interpretation of one. this weekend i learned my lesson. as cool as military stuff is, it exists for a reason: to serve the military. it doesn’t look cool on some slightly overweight 30-year old who is probably way too into movies about vietnam. in the future if i want to go military, then i’m going unauthentic. i choose not looking frumpy over having to make up some lie about how my vietnam vet uncle gave me his m-65 jacket (not that i would ever do that).