The green military jacket: anatomy of a generational love affair The garment that dressed our teenage dramas is back to make us feel cool, melancholic, and slightly rebellious

Let’s take a step back. The ’90s. A world without Wi-Fi, but with plenty of fog. I’m in the Veneto countryside, flat, suspended, where the number of bars exceeds that of the inhabitants, and the height of fun is working twelve hours in a factory before numbing yourself, one shadow at a time, between cards and bocce. I’m seventeen, and my bike is my time machine. I pedal through the fields, convinced that the Po Valley fog is my personal Central Park. In my backpack, a Greek dictionary, a wrinkled Bukowski, a bit of Fante, and all my romantic restlessness like a heroine out of Enrico Brizzi. In my ears, the CD player blasts Hai paura del buio? by Afterhours. And yes, I’m afraid of the dark, but not of Manuel Agnelli. I adore him. I always dress in black, as if I’m already mourning my own adolescence, with microscopic concessions to color: a hair tie, a chipped purple nail line, a ring that oxidizes at the first rain. And then there’s her, the green jacket.

Chapter 1: province, melancholy, and the parka as a Linus blanket

Military, oversized, rough, with pockets deep enough to hold equal parts anger, hope, and disillusionment. Because, as TARM sing, “ogni adolescenza coincide con la guerra”. And a war, even the one against yourself, deserves a uniform. Finding it, though, is a feat. No Vinted, no Zara, no online shopping. Vintage stores? Only faraway mirages, things for European capitals. Here, there are only sad haberdasheries and shops selling opaque tights and nun underwear. If you wanted something different, you had to pray in silence, or have a relative in the army willing to do a bit of sartorial smuggling. And so, by some miracle, one day she arrived: the M-65 Field Jacket, in cotton twill, with the flag on the sleeve and the drawstring at the waist. It was love at first sight. It goes with everythin, jeans, slip dresses, plaid shirts, hoodies, even that sense of rebellion that makes you believe you know who you are. I wore it everywhere: to garage parties, warehouse concerts, Latin tests. It was my Linus blanket. It smelled of cold, smoke, cotton candy, and teenage spirit. Every generation has its uniform. Mine was green. And now that the same field jacket is back on the FW25 fashion runways, I can’t help but smile. Because fashion changes, yes, but some loves, and some teenage traumas, never do.

Chapter 2: The Jacket of Lonely, the stylish outsider’s coat

Today on TikTok, they call it “The Jacket of Lonely”, and honestly, it’s the most accurate name it could have. It’s the jacket of the lonely, of those who always feel a little out of place, but with style. The one Robert De Niro wore in Taxi Driver, Al Pacino in Serpico, Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer, Woody Allen in Annie Hall, Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice, and Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, turning it from a functional garment into an existential manifesto of rebellion, isolation, and melancholy, all in a single piece of olive-green cotton. The green military jacket never really disappeared. Over the years, it’s crossed fashion trends, generations, and algorithms. It became the symbol of the 2010 indie boy, the Tumblr girl who listened to The Strokes, the preppy American girl with white jeans and an Oxford shirt, and that version of you posting Pavese quotes as captions on MySpace. Until it dressed the modern Travis Bickles who, instead of driving taxis at night, get lost in cat videos and “sad & aesthetic” playlists. It’s always been there, stubborn, like an old ex you never really block.

Chapter 3: from Vietnam to Pinterest feeds – A brief history of the M-65

It was born in 1965, in the middle of the Vietnam War. A technical, functional piece, designed to withstand mud, rain, humidity, and despair (well, maybe not that last one). With its hidden hood, flap-covered zip, and oversized pockets for carrying “the essentials” (like a pack of cigarettes and a letter from home), it was perfect. But its destiny lay elsewhere. When the war ended, the green military jacket escaped the trenches to enter the wardrobes of rebels, poets, and disillusioned souls. Worn by John Lennon and Jane Fonda, the M-65 Field Jacket transformed from a symbol of war into an anti-war statement. In the ’70s and ’80s, it became the uniform of activists, bohemians, rebels with a cause. In the ’90s, it ended up on alt-girls with chipped nail polish listening to Sonic Youth on 8 GB iPods, and boys reading Andrea Pazienza while smoking Diana Blu cigarettes outside high schools. And in the 2010s? You could find it everywhere: in vintage shops, in Kate Moss and Alexa Chung’s outfits, or hanging carelessly off the shoulders of Tumblr it-girls. An iconic piece, even when it doesn’t want to be one.

Chapter 4: FW25 and the rebirth of green (on the runway and in our feeds)

There’s something poetic about seeing a vintage military jacket return to the runway while the world burns once again. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s a need for solidity. Maybe we just miss that feeling of weight, when clothes lasted and meant something. Today, the M-65 Field Jacket is everywhere. We find it on the Fall/Winter 2025 (FW25) runways of COMME des GARÇONS HOMME PLUS, Dior, Antonio Marras, Ann Demeulemeester, and Victoria Beckham, who reimagines it in a sensual way. Each brand gives it a new identity without betraying its utilitarian soul. There are waxed twill versions, quilted styles reminiscent of Barbour and Burberry, and variations in corduroy or waxed leather. Shades range from olive green to camel, with hints of khaki and sage. The green jacket also appears on models in sneakers, on digital creatives sipping matcha instead of coffee, and on twenty-somethings calling it “core”, reinterpreting it as a kind of human VSCO filter. And that’s fine. Every generation rewrites it in its own way. But I still see it for what it was: a battle talisman, a way to say, “I’m here, even if I don’t yet know where I’m going.”

Chapter 5: the jacket as autobiography – Why we never truly left it

The green jacket of the Millennials isn’t just a trend, it’s a chapter of our collective biography. It’s the one we wore to concerts, to impromptu parking lot gatherings, to our first “grown-up” nights out. The one that smelled of smoke and CK One, but also of freedom. The same one that, today, dusted off from the back of the closet or rebought vintage, reminds us that despite everything, we’re still ourselves, just more self-aware, with less smudged eyeliner. Its power lies in being genderless, functional, and deeply emotional. Whether paired with a midi dress, wide-leg jeans, or combat boots, the M-65 Field Jacket always works, because it doesn’t follow fashion; it transcends it. It’s a piece that survives seasons, trends, and even our identity crises. So yes, the green military jacket that dressed our teenage dramas is back, and with it, an entire way of feeling. It’s here to remind us that melancholy can be chic, that rebellion can have deep pockets, and that you don’t need a like to feel authentic. Whether it’s Prada, found in a vintage market, or stolen from an ex’s closet, it doesn’t matter. Every field jacket carries a fragment of history. Maybe we no longer need it to survive high school, but we still need it to face adulthood. Today, my old M-65 still lives on. It hangs at the back of the closet, between an anonymous coat and a never-worn blazer. Sometimes I pull it out, wear it, and for a moment, I’m that girl again, with her bike, the fog, and Afterhours in her headphones. The secret to its outsider charm? It doesn’t make me feel fashionable, it makes me feel out of place, yet perfectly right. It makes me feel like myself, only with more pockets. A strange fate for a green military jacket born for the Vietnamese jungle, only to end up on generations of European teenagers fighting different wars, the inner ones, the boring ones, the ones against themselves.