Updated Army Service Dress project

[frixiedust]

While I don't know if NDHQ or other similar offices will go back to No. 3/3B, the army DEU shortage is real. At my unit we just went through the process of sizing new troops at clothing stores for DEUs. We were told there is no expected delivery date, as logistik is not manufacturing any army DEU anymore. The only items being shipped are what is left in stock. "standard size" members of the unit have been waiting on their replacement tunic or pants to show up for almost 12 months now.

That's because the new Army DEU is due out in 2026, and I hear they no longer get the rifle green gabardine (this refers to the textile not the long, winter coat). You won't see more DEU items til the new stuff arrives.

 

[frixiedust]

It’s a uniform, not a personal fashion statement. At this point in time pants and suits are gender neutral.

One uniform, one standard. Can’t meet either you shouldn’t be doing the job.

Have you read the dress instructions? It's certainly supposed to make a statement:

1. A military force’s uniform is an outward symbol of its commitment, identity and ethos. Coupled with overall appearance, the uniform is the most powerful visual expression of pride by the individual service member, and is the primary means by which the public image of the CAF is fashioned. <--that's an intentional word there.​

4. ...As items and orders shall be designed for wear by the total CAF population, differences in body morphology shall be given appropriate consideration in detailed design and tailoring.​

​

In history, uniforms have been absolutely about fashion. The dress uniforms have been about conveying status, power, authority, rank, and any other number of identities beyond those "issued" by the military. They have often considered the fashion of the day, which is why some uniforms had tight pants and others had baggier ones; it's why some jackets are double-breasted, others single, others buttoned, others toggled. Clothing is entirely about fashion.

The key thing about the "one uniform, one standard" argument is that it is based on a presumption of all things being equal, which is only possible in the homogenised straight, white, man's military (and that's not even that homogenous given how different men's bodies can be in height, weight, and musculature). The idea behind "one uniform, one standard" is the same idea behind meritocracy (that things should be based on merit is problematic because it assumes only the credentials of exactly alike people and ignores the strengths and merits brought by diversity of thought, experience, and perspective especially of those from the margins), and it's based on the idea that the standard is and should be the one determined by a select few. That select few are not the majority, they are not neutral.

Also, "one uniform" smacks of unification talk, a thing that so rankled some senior officers that they resigned over the uniforms being the same across the elements! See "Unification" at the link. That was back when no one thought about women's bodies much let alone anyone not identifying as either man or woman. So, no. There should not be one uniform.

 

[frixiedust]

So because I take a full equality stance I am now Hegseth? You all are arguing for sexist double standards.

Canada has dropped standards for years and it is embarrassing. I watched a 380lbs alcoholic pass the force test once, no way he should have stayed in yet nothing was done.

Hegseth is a idiot, however in the context of Canada we have let ourselves go. Discipline is low, fitness is low, and our leadership is too weak to do anything about it. We are more concerned about individuals being individuals than creating a team and working as such. I am happy I am out because I watched us devolve from a somewhat serious force at the end of Afghanistan to whatever we are today.

You're not taking a full equality stance. You're saying the standard should be only one thing, which ignores a plethora of other factors. Fun fact: The FORCE test that so many like to denounce does in fact have a lot of common features to things we actually do in the CAF. When deployed on a Navy ship, I had to carry 40lb bags regularly during storing ship. Dragging a body using red straps is exactly how we learned to pull someone out of a smoky area in low-to-no visibility during NETP. The only thing you don't do on ship is the rushes because it's pointless. We repeatedly see the CAF sent out on domestic ops that require building sandbag walls and moving equipment. So, if that 380lb guy can do the tasks we do, why shouldn't he be employed? No one is asking him to storm the beaches because that's likely not his job.

Now before you go all "Rifleman first" I'll let you know that what I was a sigint, during my soldier qualification the combat arms MCpl told everyone "You all need to know this because you may have to be out on patrols with the combat arms or supporting in other ways....except you <frixie's last name>, you just get the check in the box." When others protested, "why does <frixie> only need a check in the box?!" the Jack replied, "I don't know what Comm Research does, but it's not shooting a weapon. They don't do this stuff". That was his experience in Afghanistan where some people in some trades do a specific type of job that rarely, if ever, puts them in contact. So, not everyone needs to be able to charge the beaches. We all need to know how to handle weapons and do drills (PLQ reinforces this, too), so soldier first is still a thing, and it's not the same as rifleman first. If you think it is, then that's exactly why you think the one correct standard is your standard.

 

[daftandbarmy]

You're not taking a full equality stance. You're saying the standard should be only one thing, which ignores a plethora of other factors. Fun fact: The FORCE test that so many like to denounce does in fact have a lot of common features to things we actually do in the CAF. When deployed on a Navy ship, I had to carry 40lb bags regularly during storing ship. Dragging a body using red straps is exactly how we learned to pull someone out of a smoky area in low-to-no visibility during NETP. The only thing you don't do on ship is the rushes because it's pointless. We repeatedly see the CAF sent out on domestic ops that require building sandbag walls and moving equipment. So, if that 380lb guy can do the tasks we do, why shouldn't he be employed? No one is asking him to storm the beaches because that's likely not his job.

Now before you go all "Rifleman first" I'll let you know that what I was a sigint, during my soldier qualification the combat arms MCpl told everyone "You all need to know this because you may have to be out on patrols with the combat arms or supporting in other ways....except you <frixie's last name>, you just get the check in the box." When others protested, "why does <frixie> only need a check in the box?!" the Jack replied, "I don't know what Comm Research does, but it's not shooting a weapon. They don't do this stuff". That was his experience in Afghanistan where some people in some trades do a specific type of job that rarely, if ever, puts them in contact. So, not everyone needs to be able to charge the beaches. We all need to know how to handle weapons and do drills (PLQ reinforces this, too), so soldier first is still a thing, and it's not the same as rifleman first. If you think it is, then that's exactly why you think the one correct standard is your standard.

I like the FORCE test. It's a great baseline cross functional fitness test.

IMHO, it just shouldn't be the 'only' mandatory, formal test especially for higher intensity occupations like Combat Arms etc.

 

[Kirkhill]

You're not taking a full equality stance. You're saying the standard should be only one thing, which ignores a plethora of other factors. Fun fact: The FORCE test that so many like to denounce does in fact have a lot of common features to things we actually do in the CAF. When deployed on a Navy ship, I had to carry 40lb bags regularly during storing ship. Dragging a body using red straps is exactly how we learned to pull someone out of a smoky area in low-to-no visibility during NETP. The only thing you don't do on ship is the rushes because it's pointless. We repeatedly see the CAF sent out on domestic ops that require building sandbag walls and moving equipment. So, if that 380lb guy can do the tasks we do, why shouldn't he be employed? No one is asking him to storm the beaches because that's likely not his job.

Now before you go all "Rifleman first" I'll let you know that what I was a sigint, during my soldier qualification the combat arms MCpl told everyone "You all need to know this because you may have to be out on patrols with the combat arms or supporting in other ways....except you <frixie's last name>, you just get the check in the box." When others protested, "why does <frixie> only need a check in the box?!" the Jack replied, "I don't know what Comm Research does, but it's not shooting a weapon. They don't do this stuff". That was his experience in Afghanistan where some people in some trades do a specific type of job that rarely, if ever, puts them in contact. So, not everyone needs to be able to charge the beaches. We all need to know how to handle weapons and do drills (PLQ reinforces this, too), so soldier first is still a thing, and it's not the same as rifleman first. If you think it is, then that's exactly why you think the one correct standard is your standard.

You had me in your first paragraph and then you lost me.

You are absolutely right about a uniform being a fashion statement. Uniforms were influenced by fashion and influenced fashion.

Recruiting has always been a problem and so uniforms that showcased troops as being of their time and place have always been important.

And properly turned out soldiers was both a matter of their personal pride and a mattet of pride to their commanders. That is why 18th and 19th century owners of companies and regiments carried tailors on strength. They didn't just maintain uniforms they fitted them.

Beyond that there is nothing personal about a uniform. It is the antithesis of a personal statement. It is a corporate statement. It is a statement that one soldier is like another and they are all interchangeable and replaceable. One falls another will advance a rank and top up that file. And the advance will continue. The line will hold.

If you want to be an individual in all circumstances then the forces are probably not for you.

 

[frixiedust]

So what exactly would that look like, that isn't a copy of someone else's uniform? There is nothing wrong with a uniform that reflects our history, made in more modern cuts, with modern materials.

If we wanted a "modern" dress uniform it could be CADPAT/NCDs, because current dress uniforms are just slightly modified versions of older work uniforms.

I'd rather see us drop the silly "service dress" concept altogether, and have just "operational dress", and "full dress" uniforms. With "full dress" uniforms saved for ceremonial occasions like Remembrance Day, Battle of the Atlantic, Legislature openings etc..

Well, that's a question I've been considering. Operational clothing and Non-Operational clothing are completely separate things now. The Ceremonial dress you refer to is even more steeped in masculinities and colonialism than the service dress.

The pervasiveness of western masculine standards of professional attire is such that it's hard to come up with something that isn't still steeped in the British Imperial Project. Wherever the Brits went, they brought their ideas of fashion, status, authority, morality, professionalism, etc. This is why Navies around the world all seem to wear some version of the same uniform. Undoing colonialism is so much harder that it might be impossible. I'm reading and listening to Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera right now, who's basically making the argument thus far in the book that British imperialism and colonisation were then and are still deeply harmful to the world but would be nearly impossible to undo. He also points out that not everything was bad. We can agree that paved roads and Westminster Parliamentary democracies are pretty good exports even if both might still need improvements.

So entrenched are ideas of professionalism being clothed in a suit and tie that women might adopt this style of dress to claim the status for themselves. In the military, many women must masculinise to be accepted (sometimes fully accepted, sometimes still grudgingly). And masculinising means treating other women with the same attitudes as their male peers (you can read about this from people like Sandra Perron or Nancy Taber or many others).

But women in suits have never been completely the same in status. Enloe (2000, in Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives) talks about the military's efforts in WWII to control and shape femininity so it would 1. function to reinforce masculinity, 2. convey that women in uniforms were able to do what they were allowed to do without offending the men's sensibilities about their own importance now that women were doing jobs the men had been doing, and 3. reassure everyone that the Women's Army Corp was neither full of loose women nor "a den of lesbians" (p. 267). Since it's around this time that the style of the current uniform took shape, the ideologies behind its design are still woven into the fabric. So, what does modern professional service dress look like to me? I don't know yet. But it shouldn't differentiate gender identities by pocket flaps, tunic hems, collar styles, or button direction (these are all currently different between the "men's" and "women's" tunics and even more so in the new CA DEU). What if we started to look to the future? I'm not suggesting we consider the foolishness of the US Space Force, but maybe buttons could be forgone altogether? Maybe zippered closures that don't show the zipper could be an option? Maybe we can get rid of pockets because we're not allowed to carry anything in them anyway?

 

[frixiedust]

Yes yes, we're all nasty Colonialists who continue to keep the average Canadian down with our stylish and highly polished jackboots... (which happen to be named after the Strathcona's, but you already knew that right?)

Anyways, I'm not sure what your point is here. We had different uniforms for women, they didn't like that.

So they got to wear the men's uniforms, which didn't fit well.

Now, and this is not a recent development, we're having everybody dress the same. Except this most recent update which my post was about took us from massive and box shaped shirts that need to be tailored to individual body shapes like the DEU shirts to women's and men's cuts for the shirts. We have also given members the option to buy pants and boots that fit the individual member's body, as long as they're blue cargo pants with a gold stripe and have no prominent branding and black boots.

Your last couple of sentences suggests to me you want us to force the women in the RCMP to give up the serge because its a male uniform and go back to what was considered at the time to be appropriate uniform dress for women. I know more than one female member who would be prepared to fight you to the death over that idea.

Yes, we are all still colonisers. That's not going to change anytime soon. And yes, I did know that the boots are the Strathcona Boot.

My point was that it isn't surprising for the RCMP to have the same struggles with uniforms that the CAF does since they come from a shared history. The RCMP being born from a military unit comprised of a paramilitary police force means they will have the same legacy as the rest of the CAF. So, I was simply saying that it's not a surprise.

I am certain many women in the RCMP would not want to give up the serge. I never said it doesn't look sharp. I love watching the Musical Ride here in Ottawa. It's skill and precision and impressive. But I still can acknowledge that it has some problematic history. As I mentioned to another user, I've been engaging with Sathnam Sanghera's Empireworld in addition to some scholars on militarism, feminism, and pedagogy as I work through my degree and thesis. What might emerge is that we may not be able to undo the imperialist impacts of colonialism, but what we do going forward matters. Rather than maintaining the same old thing, maybe reimagine it, modernise it, take the things that aren't problematic and go forth from there? Enloe (2004) says that patriarchy is adaptable because it gets women to participate in ways that make them feel safe and valued when it's really just another way to keep the status quo. We think as women that we've reached some type of equality when we look like the men, but that's not true. It's assimilation into the machine. I'm as guilty of it as I am critical of it. That's the real struggle.

It's great they get to decide the fit of their uniforms now from an operational standpoint. But conflating operational and ceremonial or dress attire is not useful. They serve different functions, so they need to be assessed on different criteria.

 

[dapaterson]

I like the FORCE test. It's a great baseline cross functional fitness test.

IMHO, it just shouldn't be the 'only' mandatory, formal test especially for higher intensity occupations like Combat Arms etc.

So you're saying the Army as an institution, responsible for the combat arms, is failing in its stewardship of the institution by not doing the work to establish a valid, legally defensible, informed by science fitness standard?

 

[frixiedust]

So now cultural standards matter.


My point is we aren’t one job with some standard. We are many jobs with many standards. We have single standards for jobs, and in that standard are clothes meant to fit soldiers. As we expect them all do so their job, regardless of their bodies. So that means we account for things like sex specific physical features and shapes. You’ve also said that a uniform isn’t a fashion statement, that’s a falsehood. Uniforms, especially dress, have always reflected the fashions of the day - Napoleonic Hussars didn’t have that much braid for its practical effect.

Ultimately a service dress uniform should do three things.

Firstly it should present a professional image. So it should be tailored and cut to reflect the body wearing.

Secondly it should instill pride in the member wearing it - part of that means it should look good and reflect what society expects people to wear. Which goes back to one.

Lastly we want it to be appealing to people who see it as a passive recruiting measure. So people at large should see it, like it, and think the people wearing it looks good.

All of that lends itself to reflecting society as a whole, and those cultural standards in the uniform.

I agree with you on this. You've made similar arguments to mine. The only thing I would add is that we should maybe be interrogating what professionalism does and should look like. Fashion and society also take their cues from the military. I can't recall where I read it (I think it might have been in the CAF Ethos) that where the military goes, so goes society. It means that if we embrace and celebrate diversity, then society starts to think, "well, if the military sees diversity as a strength, then so should we". And this idea of diversity as a strength in the CAF is several decades old, although "diversity" has changed along the way from simply including women to also considering people of varied ethnicities, gender identities, and <insert identity point here>.

So, yes, the uniform should be tailored to fit the body well. Yes, it should instill pride in the member (partially by looking good). And yes, it should be a passive recruiting tool. But I would add that we should not just reflect society but persuade society to a new and progressive view of professionalism.

 

[frixiedust]

The Navy one looks smart, but the army one was hideous.

Death to the bowler.

I used to advocate that we in the army should all have the peaked cap because nothing is grubbier looking than someone wearing the same beret with DEU that they wear with their combats. And the berets are all formed differently depending on your trade, unit, who taught you to form it. For a military so on about uniformity, the range of beret forms is proof that individuality is alive and well among those same people who insist on one standard for everyone. But I think maybe the army wedge might be a better option than the peaked cap.

 

[daftandbarmy]

So you're saying the Army as an institution, responsible for the combat arms, is failing in it's stewardship of the institution by not doing the work to establish a valid, legally defensible, informed by science fitness standards?

You mean are we killing our soldiers with kindness?

Yes, I strongly believe that (from the comfort of my armchair)

"Truly then, it is killing men with kindness not to insist upon physical standards during training which will give them maximum fitness for the extraordinary stresses of campaigning in war."

S.L.A Marshall

 

[frixiedust]

They are throwbacks to Canadian Army uniforms of that era so we are re-aligned with the UK, Australia, NZ etc.....there's nothing wrong with sharing the same military heritage and history with former dominions, still our closest allies.

Well, if we're trying to send a message about being aligned under the British Imperial banner, sure. But if we want to be our own people who maybe want to go forward not celebrating the problematic parts of our history, we could consider something different. It's about the message we want to send as a military and as a country. That messaging is very important right now. And these uniforms in their resemblance to British colonies also look like some of the stuff in the US.

 

[frixiedust]

With the RCE, RCMS, RCLS, and "Land DEU" members of various branches (Legal, PA, PSEL, etc) all opting out and sticking with rifle green.

The BN I read earlier this month (dated 2025) stated the move to Army Blue was no longer optional for those organizations with the new uniform coming out.

Wait, does that mean all the CA TDOs are going to have Army Blue berets? I can put my blue RCCS beret back on?! I was rather bitter that I had to order and form two more green ones when I switched, and I liked the blue ones.

 

[frixiedust]

Casually just chiming in to remind everyone that more time has elapsed since unification than existed before for most of actual dress. Berets (in any colour) are a WW1/2 decisions, and the RCN despite its claims as a senior service was 57 years old at unification. So if we’re talking about traditions we should remember that people have been dressed this way for longer as well as not forget uniforms changed fairly regularly back in the days of yore.

I always love when the navy brings up senior service because I often feel like there was a militia before there was a navy... But maybe that's splitting hairs.

 

[frixiedust]

That works too.

Minimally, replacing the skirt (horribly cut, auth for all but entirely femme) with the kilt (fits basically everyone, more or less universal) would be a great service to everyone who wants to wear something other than trousers.

I hate skirts and dresses personally, which is why I've never worn the DEU skirt. But I would wear a kilt partially because I have some Scottish roots. However, in Scottish tradition, the kilt is men's attire. Women wear a, wait for it, plaid long skirt or dress. In my Catholic high school, a guy wore one of the girl's kilts and got kicked out if he refused to change. The principal was quoted in the local newspaper saying the kilt was for girls. My mum laughed out loud and said, "What an idiot! The kilt was always for men!". But I would accept it as a sort of middle ground in the gendered outfit battle. I did want to join the RCAF when I enrolled. I loved the colour of the RCAF plaid.

 

[frixiedust]

Legit the only thing that matters with dress uniforms beyond general comfort is LCF. The new design looks cool as shit, who caresif it looks similar to a Second World War uniform. If anything, it makes it cooler because its an homage to when we were feared as an Army. What would you suggest if you want something with our own identity? I ask that seriously because I am curious to your perspective.

What's LCF? I am not familiar with this acronym.

At a glance, the new uniform does look sharp IF one has the "right" body type and such to wear it (that's a comment that's going to spin up all those criticising the size of some people as if fat people can't also be the most muscular or strongest people in the room--only thin and svelt, that's their mantra). The colour is specifically designed to align with the new CA MT CADPAT, so the army looks like the army. No, there's nothing superficially wrong with paying homage to heritage. The problem is that there are problematic things baked into those heritages. If we are truly committed to diversity, equity (not equality because that's not really possible), inclusion, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and LGBT Purge Survivors and sexual misconduct and racial misconduct survivors, then we need to consider what a person committed to that looks like. A question that has come up for me is, Can we truly change our culture without changing how we present to the world? If we project an identity that is western, colonial, and masculine, is it serving or undermining our culture change efforts? If what we still truly believe is represented by our uniforms, are we then only paying lip service to the inclusion efforts just to seem progressive?

When I saw the image on soldiersystems.net from 2024 CANSEC, I thought the one on the left was the men's and the one on the right was women's. I also thought that "man"nequin had quite the shapely figure , the kind of figure seen on some Victorian men but not much since. Upon scouring the web and examining closer (I'm doing a thesis on the CAF uniform as public and embodied pedagogy), I realised that these are both women's styles. This did two things: 1. a brief celebration that one option was devoid of most of the current gendered modifications that impose femininity, and that it was cut for bodies with different shoulder-to-hip ratios (which would accommodate every person who has this shape from cis-women to transmen to transwomen and some cis-men). 2. a lament that the style was simply a men's suit, thus reinforcing that the socially acceptable presentation of professionalism that we are hellbent on preserving is that of a WWII-era man.


I would love to be on the dress committee. I would love to hear other people's ideas. I would love for the dress committee to also include someone from the fashion industry as a SME in the field of clothing. I don't know how we could get away from 'mannish' clothing. But there's got to be something better than pulling out old military uniform designs and calling them "new".

 

[boredtoon]

That's because the new Army DEU is due out in 2026, and I hear they no longer get the rifle green gabardine (this refers to the textile not the long, winter coat). You won't see more DEU items til the new stuff arrives.

Yea, I know. But the new service dress is scheduled for issue in Q4 2026, so, troops in my unit will be without any DEU/Service Dress for another year and a half.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I always love when the navy brings up senior service because I often feel like there was a militia before there was a navy... But maybe that's splitting hairs.

Well if you go back to the French Marines who I believe the Van Doo's trace their history to, for Canada they predate everyone. Calling the RCN the "Senior Service" is quite the stretch when you take a good look at it.

 

[frixiedust]

The reality is that women can fit in clothes made for men, men can't fit in clothes made for women.

I remember Star Trek The Next Generation tried to come up with a gender neutral dress that male actors would wear. I don't think it lasted past the first season. I could just see all the applications for religious exceptions if the CAF tried that.

I'm glad you mentioned Star Trek. Somehow, ST has been on my mind throughout my thinking about uniforms. I don't think they solved the gendered dress issue either, but they did seem to do away with things that might be inherently male or female after a while. ST: TOS certainly liked to put women in short skirts. TNG made an effort with the likes of Lt Yar wearing the same uniform as Lt LaForge, but they still put Troi in a dress and low-cut things all the time. DSN and Voyager seemed to do a bit better, but only slightly.... So, maybe this is an issue that we will never solve in the 21st century because it might never be solved beyond the 24th

 

[daftandbarmy]

Well if you go back to the French Marines who I believe the Van Doo's trace their history to, for Canada they predate everyone. Calling the RCN the "Senior Service" is quite the stretch when you take a good look at it.

Too bad 'senior' is not always synonymous with 'excellence'