Indian Made Battledress Blouse

Although the vast majority of Indian made clothing is light weight KD or jungle uniforms, the sub-continent did produce woollen uniforms like those made in the UK. These included an Indian variant of the Battle dress used throughout the war by Empire troops. These uniforms are very hard to find, and I was delighted when a friend agreed to sell me his BD blouse for a very reasonable price. As is often the case the trousers which go with the set are virtually unobtainable and fetch correspondingly high prices.

The BD blouse itself is cut to the same design as the ’37 Pattern’ uniform from Great Britain:The blouse displays none of the economy features used in Great Britain and has pleated pockets:The buttons also have a fly front; I have not seen enough of these blouses to say for sure if this was a universal feature of them, but I suspect it would have been. The buckle for the waist strap is a distinctive design made of blackened metal:This seems to be a peculiarly Indian design. The uniform is fastened with small brass buttons, again differing in style to the brass dish buttons used on British manufacture:The shoulder straps are secured with small vegetable ivory (plastic) buttons:The exterior fabric of the battledress has a slightly different hue to that from Great Britain, and is slightly but not overly coarser in texture (indian above, British below):The Indian origins of the blouse are most apparent inside where the collar lining and pockets are made of much coarser Indian cotton than that used elsewhere:The inside has two circular stamps, one ‘17’ is the size of the BD blouse (Height 6’1”-6’2”, Breast 41”-42” and waist 36” to 38”), whilst the second indicates the blouse was made by a clothing company called Shah and would show the date if it was clearer:Sadly the identity of the company is still a mystery, as is so often the case with Indian manufacturers. These BDs were commonly issued to soldiers and POWs being shipped back to the UK at the end of hte war so they had someting warmer than their tropical kit to wear when they landed back in the UK. This BD blouse is a very large size and is in virtually mint condition so I doubt I will see another as good again.