Pattern 1959 Denison in Lizard Camouflage?

Basically, I have no idea what this is.

It is made to a proper Pattern 1959 spec Denison format with all the military features (down to woolen collar lining) that I think preclude the possibility of it being some cheapie fashion piece. The supplier is not known to me and the camouflage is more on the "lizard" side of things. Snaps and hardware reminiscent of late P59s.

I was looking at that one yesterday. I can't make heads or tails of it either. Maybe a contract piece for Iraq or some other country? It's certainly not British military kit.

The seller is one of the bunch of Asian textile salvager sellers. Which means his stuff ranges from flat out commercial to "I can't believe anybody would be so stupid as to throw that out!!!"

Steve

Those were my thoughts as well. Some contract piece to Africa or the Middle East. It's inbound to me, I like all flavours of P59. Still snooping around for a genuine Kenyan-contract type.

For some reason, Thailand is the destination for a lot of these discarded clothes, but I know they get gems from all over the world.

He had an Iraqi lizard smock sell at the same time, but those I suspect to be of Korean origin, as were a great many Iraqi uniforms in the 80s.

Like it a lot. Just bagged myself one of those Franklin Denisons that I've been after for a while to join the 59 Pattern collection

Gulf91 wrote:Like it a lot. Just bagged myself one of those Franklin Denisons that I've been after for a while to join the 59 Pattern collection

Franklin was a supplier of those smocks to Kenya, so the faithful P59 replicas you see may very well have been overruns from the Kenya contract.

I've been trying to find such a smock with African provenance.

All the online pics I've seen over the years of those Frankin smocks they look like exact copies of Brit made ones but on arrival surprised to see how green the base colour of the cammo is compared to Brit ones and of course the chunky plastic zip and Franklin marked epaulette buttons. And the 3 rows of poppers on the tail of which I was aware.

I **THINK** I saw one of these in a poorly scanned photo from a book about the SAS in Oman. I've purchased the title which is on the way to me for further investigation..