Factory Dyed Desert Shirt.

Knew that some soldiers dyed their own clothing at one stage but this looks to have been factory dyed/made this way?

Gulf, might want to check the post below titled 'info on British PECOC trials'...I managed to get my hands on a bit of this kit...lovely kit!!

Have 2 of these dyed shirts-both can go if any interest.

Just got a nice set of Im presuming soldier dyed that didnt turn out as expected as they are a nice shade of blue!!!!!

Ha ha I saw some a while ago on eBay and thought mmmmm has the RN dyed them a cheap option?! I contacted the chap selling them and he said no, he was dying them for parties!!!

Best information I have is they were used for a rotation in Belize.  This came from the guy I bought mine from and it was his unit that went over there.  They overdyed jackets, under armor shirts, trousers, and IIRC boonie hats.  I screwed up and missed out on the trousers, which I have been looking for ever since  A big batch of them hit UK eBay when the rotation returned, but I've not stumbled upon any since then.

The odd thing is these are not standard issue desert kit since ripstop in this particular design isn't something that was general issue.

Oddly enough, I just received a very dark green overdyed helicopter crew jacket.  But I don't know what to make of it because the buttons are black plastic instead of tan.

Steve

Rip stop wasn't general issue for this type,interesting,will have to check my new blue set. Remember seeing an excellent fly on the wall documentary last year or possibly the year after where a film crew followed a group of soldiers for a year out in Afghanistan and remember seeing guys there dying their clothing to various degrees of success as the DDPM stood out like a sore thumb in the lush green grassy areas they were tasked to patrol.

Yes, for sure there were dye jobs on standard kit in Afghanistan. Sometimes they dyed only the top and not the bottom. But these green pieces are not the standard kit of the time, so they didn't likely come from Afghanistan. The guy I bought mine from seemed credible so I think his Belize story is probably the right answer.

Someone on this Forum snagged a bunch of these pieces when they were first popping up in the UK. The colors were inconsistently dark/light. As I said, they disappeared very quickly so there definitely wasn't a lot of them to start with.

Damn I want trousers!

Steve

A few good pics of dyed shirts being worn here----

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/an-artery-of-opium-a-vein-of-taliban/page-3.htm

Just got a bunch of these from Fleet farm for pennies. They're much darker and have Black buttons. The patches appear to have been added after the dyeing process. Any ideas? Done for commercial sale or at the original factory?






Swisslink is also selling them as so called "Night camo"

The dyed versions appear to be popular street wear in the UK. When I went this past summer I saw several. One was worn by a senior gentleman on our tour bus in the Highlands alongside a veteran's hat. Tactically, they are a disaster; but otherwise they look kind of neat.

Many years ago I saw piles of Belgian Jigsaw trousers dyed black, red, and... oh I am going to cry now that I think about it It was clearly an attempt to have them be marketable as surplus.

The strange thing about overdying is it doesn't necessarily sink into certain things. Look at the thread and button straps. The British "silk" style labels are also not susceptible to color change. The unit badge appears to have soaked in some of the dye. The Union Jack, on the other hand, looks clean and probably added after dying.

The thing that comes back to me about this is that the examples are ripstop. As Gulf said above, it's not like this is the common type in the surplus market. So what gives?

Steve

I was thinking that was kind of odd too. Out of the 10 sets I got, 7 were ripstop.