Uniforms Garments: Sweaters Types--Military Style
Figure 1.--The boys at this school wear a military style sweater with padded shoulders. This was a uniformn change from a standars grey "V"-neck sweater. Blue is one of the colors used for these these sweaters.
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We also noted a kind of military style crew-neck sweater with padding on one or both shoulders. One of these military-style sweaters can be seen here done in blue (figure 1). We do not know what this style of sweater was called. Nor do we know what the origibal purpose of the padding was. It was fefinitely a tyle developed for British military use. A British reader tells us, "The military sweater goes back to the 1970s at least and was originally part of the armed forces' more practical combat gear. We think it was related to rifles or back pack straps. With or without epaulettes, to carry detachable flashes bearing badges or insignia (to denote rank), these eventually found their way into army surplus shops etc in a wide range of sizes." They became popular with boys and thus were eventually adopted at some prep and public schools. This is a style which seems to have appeared after World War II, but was not adopted for schoolwear until the 1970s. We saw them at several schools in the 1980s. It may have become popular because in several different colors, depending on the cadet program adopted in the public (senior) schools. This included: olive green and later sand was used for tha Army program, navy blue for the Royal Navy ptogram, and light blue for the Royal Air Force ptogram. At prep schools we only saw the navy blue sweaters. There were slightly varied trim. While a crew-neck sweater, a some schools they were worn with ties, even though you could hardly see the tie when it was worn..
