Witty and informative 'Uniforms' lays bare human nature

A UPS man delivering packages in full Nazi regalia; a ferryboat crew dressed in nuns' habits ...

All it takes to realize what powerful signals are encoded in a uniform is to picture some familiar figure in your life dressed in the wrong one. An inappropriate uniform can be as startling or menacing or hilarious as inappropriate nudity. It can be a sign of madness, mockery or aggression.

There must be many meanings embodied in appropriately worn uniforms of which we are only half-conscious. In "Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear," National Book Award winner Paul Fussell ("The Great War and Modern Memory") illuminates those meanings. He also provides a wealth of anecdotal background on dozens of different uniforms. The book is acidly witty and informative, cramming a vast amount of information into 200 pages. The military, the clergy, brides in their gowns, chefs in their toques — Fussell covers them all.

A good half of "Uniforms," unsurprisingly, is devoted to the military, with Fussell making especially acerbic remarks about the Germans. He quotes novelist Kurt Vonnegut on Nazi uniforms ("Madly theatrical"), and he notes that Hermann Goring was fond of "long coats, presumably to emphasize the vertical when he was rapidly growing horizontal." Hitler showed "an unsuspected taste for understatement" in what he wore.

A crucial change came during the world wars with the discovery that "troops better survived the new techniques of military murder if they could hardly be seen." Combat garb and ceremonial garb became a study in contrasts.

If military parade dress is more about appearance than utility, so too is the dressy elegance of airline pilots as they board their craft ahead of their passengers. "There is hardly a repeated human action anywhere faster," Fussell quips, "than the speed with which pilot and co-pilot ... whip off jackets, caps, and neckties" once they're in the cockpit. That immaculate pre-cockpit appearance is largely a confidence-instilling exercise, conducted for the passengers' sake."

Fussell doesn't ignore the erotic component of uniforms, whether broad-shouldered martial attire or snug-fitting blue jeans.

Why did jeans catch on so successfully as an anti-uniform?

There is, he says, "a sexual, or at least a pelvic, answer" — and then provides details.

What about uniforms that conceal the shape of the body?

"Among people who attend to clothing design," he explains, "it must be an accepted understanding that conspicuous waste of material is a way to suggest the seniority and high value of the wearer. It is here that the senior chef's needlessly tall toque and the physician's unnecessarily long white lab coat have more in common than one might suspect."

That same more-material-equals-greater-personage principle applies to the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, right on up to the pope. And if you like color in your uniforms, Fussell adds, you can't do better than the Catholics' "amazing uniform repertory" — though the Nazis and the U.S. Marines "in full dress" give them serious competition.

The book's chapters are short, snappy and equipped with titles that vividly suggest Fussell's shrewd eye for what constitutes a uniform: "Stigmatic Uniforms" (on prisoners' garb), "Women's Nuptial Uniforms" (on bridal gowns), "The Pitiable Misfits of the Klan" (in which it is revealed that the gal who dresses the Ku Klux Klan "clears about sixty dollars on each robe and hood"). In a chapter called "Pretties," he delivers perfect mini-essays on the sartorial origins of the Vatican's Swiss Guards and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Throughout the book, he also provides ample ammunition for your next game of Trivial Pursuit. Queen Victoria turns out to be responsible for both the wearing of white (as opposed to colored) bridal gowns and the now-faded fad of dressing up boys in sailor suits. And one designer, the "ubiquitous" Stan Herman, is responsible for the uniforms of Federal Express, UPS, Amtrak, TWA, United Airlines and McDonald's.

A few details may be off in "Uniforms." One UPS man I waylaid said it was news to him that deliverers' trousers "must be washed daily by the company," as Fussell asserts. And Fussell's belief that uniform-wearers have an "all but universal pride" in their outfits seems far-fetched. Does that include menial help? Unruly schoolchildren?

Still, at its most penetrating "Uniforms" offers a provocative look at human nature itself.

"Human beings," Fussell says, "are the only species with minds complicated enough to trap themselves in the paradox of uniforms: each person senses the psychological imperative to dress uniformly and recognizably like others, while responding at the same time to the opposite tug, the impulse to secretly treasure and occasionally exhibit a singular identity or 'personality.' It is something like 'anxiety' that propels both urges: the one toward hiding safely among the mass, thereby avoiding disapproval; the other, the fear of nonentity or insignificance."

And what are you wearing?