The Articles of Interest podcast with Avery Trufelman is doing a series on U.S. military uniforms and gear, and its cross-influence with civlian style, mostly men’s. Most of the series focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries, but it reaches back to the 1700s and 1800s. Start here with Chapter 1: The American military uniform.
Military gear and civilian outdoor gear are closely linked, and in the late 1700s and 1800s, being a manly U.S. man meant going out and killing an animal, skinning it and making it into an outdoor suit yourself. That was the theory. In reailty, you’d hire a Native American woman to do that.