Mencyclopaedia: Alpha Industries

From tabard to trench coat to chino, war has prompted the production of some of the greatest functional garments in man's arsenal. And while Britain has an honourable record when it comes to kit‑development, we tend to be a bit 19th‑century: for many years, the US has been the undisputed superpower of military-industrial style. Much of this is thanks to a label named Alpha Industries, whose fortunes mirror those of the US itself.

The company was created in 1959 as part of a confederation of businesses based in Knoxville, Tennessee, dedicated to winning clothing contracts from the United States Department of Defense.

Despite a calamitous start - the ink on a large order of US Navy shipboard shirts was misapplied, leading to their rejection - Alpha just about prevailed, and found itself perfectly placed to profit from four decades of US foreign policy.

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During the Sixties its workforce more than quintupled as the war in Vietnam escalated and the Cold War kicked in. Those workers became responsible for outfitting the US military in two of its most emblematic garments; the MA-1 flight jacket and the M-51 (later M-65) field jacket. Olive green, ribbed at the waist, neck and sleeve and lined in unmissable "Indian" orange (so the wearer could turn his jacket inside-out if crash-landed and waiting for rescue). The MA-1 was made entirely of the nylon that USAF procurers had decreed should replace leather for flight jackets after the Second World War. The green cotton M-51 (and its inbuilt-hooded, cotton/nylon mix 1965 update the M-65) were the epauletted, multi-pocketed, all-purpose workhorses of the US Army. By the Seventies, and all through the Reagan era in the following decade, Alpha produced more than half a million of these tough and practical jackets every year.

Because the contracts demanded it, every single one of them was labelled with the Alpha name. And as the jackets seeped from military into civilian life - anti-Vietnam demonstrators favoured them, veterans had become fond of them, and they had cameos in Top Gun, Taxi Driver, Rambo and many other Hollywood films - wholesalers began to hustle the company for non‑military stock. Alpha created a new non-military three-lined logo and provided the same styles in new colours for this new market.

Left, M65 field jacket, £140; right, MA1 TT jacket, £100 ; 01869 366 580.

By the Nineties, Alpha had become so engrained a part of the development of US military uniform that it regularly worked with a classified "Textile Laboratory" to finesse experimental garments, including buoyant overcoats for the navy and new women's styles.

It also won contracts to uniform US allies - Israeli pilots and Saudi infantrymen alike wore Alpha. Yet when the Cold War was won, Alpha nearly went under, along with all of its Knoxville peers. Defence spending was slashed and neither the conflicts in Bosnia nor Iraq was enough to keep this mass military outfitter's in business.

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So Alpha turned exclusively to the civilian market, transforming those flight jackets into attire for bouncers, roadies, fans and military enthusiasts. It licensed its name around the world, and downsized its American production as globalisation kicked in. Now Alpha jackets are labelled "Made in China" and, at least in Europe, licensed to a German distributor. Yet the fact remains that Alpha makes affordable, tough, and rather fetching jackets whose track record is well and truly proven.

Read more from Luke's column here

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