Pair of Kings: A Fashion and Culture Podcast · Pair of Kings

Avery Trufelman on Why We Wear Military Clothes, M-65 Field Jackets, and how Military Surplus Shaped Modern Fashion History | 13.12

·1 hr 25 min·5 clips

Special Forces became the look everyone copied, from Delta Force to police and border patrol.

1. Pair of Kings: A Fashion and Culture Podcast focuses on Avery Trufelman and her Articles of Interest season about military clothing, military surplus, and fashion history. 2. Saul Thompson and Michael Smith host the conversation, and Avery Trufelman appears as the showrunner, producer, host, and creator of Articles of Interest. 3. The episode asks how military clothes moved from uniforms and surplus into modern fashion, gorp core, athleisure, and technical design. 4. Avery says Articles of Interest began in 2018 as individual fashion stories that could be bundled together. 5. She describes a later shift to a serial format after working at New York magazine and deciding to make a preppy-clothes season. 6. She says the military season required talking to “everyone I could find,” including people near military bases and clothing companies. 7. She describes the reporting as a “wide net of chaos” followed by narrowing and gap-filling. 8. Avery says she often found herself in places like “some parking lot in Olympia, Washington” wondering why she was there. 9. The hosts and Avery joke about fashion-podcast rivalry and about what each of them is wearing. 10. Saul describes an “operation Thunderbolt” shirt from 1986 with a cartoon pig getting hit by a thunderbolt. 11. Avery says her interest in clothing came from thrift shopping in high school and from being drawn to clothes before thinking about their social role. 12. She recalls buying “absurd knockoff poochy shift dresses” on Haight Street and feeling out of place in a faux-fur jacket. 13. Avery says a Vivienne Westwood show at the de Young Museum changed how she understood punk fashion. 14. She says that show revealed punk fashion as designer-shaped, not only musician-shaped. 15. Avery says Westwood “granted us all permission” to wear clothes with holes, piercings, and unconventional beauty. 16. She says she now tries to focus on who fashion affects, what it means, and how it shapes self-perception. 17. Avery says she moved from being categorically “against the military” to a more complicated view after interviewing people who served. 18. She says the American military is supposed to be a democratic, protective project, even though current uses of force trouble her. 19. This conversation will appeal to listeners who want fashion history, military gear, and design context. 20. This conversation may not suit listeners who want only trend talk without history or policy.

As heard by us

A loose, teasing fashion conversation with sharp detours and enough personality to carry it.

Pair of Kings uses Avery Truffleman’s visit to open up a broader talk about clothing, then drifts into gym wear, athleisure, and gorp-core. The hosts keep the tone loose and teasing, and the episode is at its best when that back-and-forth carries the point instead of trying to…

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Why you'd press play

You want a breezy fashion-podcast conversation with Avery Trufelman about how she thinks about clothing.

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