Talk:Khaki

message: I was shocked when I read this site: . ATTENTION GERMAN WIKIPEDIANS: do Germans really don't wear khakis? Please confirm. I had just posted on my blog if there is any Hitler or East German connection with khakis. This blogger might've looked like stupid when he wore his khakis one day. Chitetskoy (talk) 20:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't worry about a random blogger. oknazevad (talk) 17:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

text: Could be true. If I understand "khaki pants" correctly, I would say the combination of elegant, creased dress pants with such a light color is quite unusual in Germany. When I see those pants a picture of an old American man wearing a panama hat and a pink polo shirt springs to my mind immediately. Jeans on the other hand are not so uncommon in shades of brown/sandy/khaki. But note the comment below, which says there's no such thing as "khaki pants". There's chinos and those are not very common in Germany. Also people might just have been outraged at his socks and not his pants, as white socks have been a major fashion no-no in Germany for some decades. But I don't think any of this should go in the article, which is after all about the colour khaki. --BjKa (talk) 13:10, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Germans not wearing khakis? 

message: I removed the sentence
In French, and German, for example, "khaki" refers to a much darker olive drab-style military green.
re German: I disagree. I have never heard "khaki" describe a shade of green in Germany. See also de:Khaki
re French: fr:Kaki (couleur) differentiates beween plain kaki and vert kaki ("green khaki"). Therefore kaki is predominantly not green in French.
--BjKa (talk) 13:10, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Green in other Countries 

message: "Khaki-colored uniforms were used officially by British troops for the first time during the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia" 
This statement is both misleading and erroneous on several counts.
1. Firstly the clothing worn by troops on the Abyssinia expedition may have been khaki by name but it was  not khaki by colour as defined by this article- a point which reflects a more general flaw in this article. 
Khakee as it often  appeared for the first forty years  of the term's use in English,  referred to drab coloured clothing that ranged in shade from grey through brown to ochre or tan. The Corp of Guides  on the Northwest frontier in the 1840s wore  clothing that was referred to as being "a mud-colour" and  their regimentally produced khaki uniforms remained a particular  shade of brown for the next fifty years. 
Khaki clothing was then first worn on a broad scale during the Indian Mutiny. It was both improvised and commercially produced, achieving a broad range of shades. As reported by an eye-witness: 
"This khakee, which before May 1857 was only seen across the Indus, was of a sort of grey drab, varying much in tint, but adopted by the Frontier troops for their hill fighting, being nearly of the colour of the desert, or the bare stony hills in these parts... it quickly became fashionable for everybody, which it has pretty well since remained. Almost every other regiment, (cavalry,artillery and infantry), Native and European turned out in the aforesaid khakee but it was of so many different shades- puce colour, slate colour, drab, &c, that a delightful variety was exhibited." 
In the 1860s there were repeated references to khakee as 'gray or dust-coloured,' and the Indian Army troops sent on the expedition to Abyssinia   wore white summer uniforms stained a shade of 'grey khakee,' while  also carrying red serge frocks as a supplement for the cold nights of the Ethiopian highlands.
2. Secondly, the reference to  khaki clothing  being "used officially for the first time in Abyssinia" is incorrect and misleading. The stained khaki clothing worn in Ethiopia  was not regulation although it was officially sanctioned. Moreover,  there were only two HM infantry regiments on the expedition.  As early as December 1857 during the Indian Mutiny, troops for India were to be provided with "one suit of drab-coloured India clothing" and in May 1858 it was ordered that "for the future the summer clothing of the European soldiers shall consist of two suits of 'khakee'."  Problems with obtaining a consistent and wash fast colourant meant the first official use of khaki was abandoned in 1864. However, improvised staining of summer clothes on an ad hoc basis at regimental level continued until a fast mineral khaki dye was patented in 1884 and a satisfactory regulation khaki drill uniform was authorised for troops in India.
3. Continuing down this paragraph, the text jumps from Abyssinia to the so-called 'Mahdist wars', omitting the Afghan war of 1878-80 which was important for being the first large-scale campaign when all fighting troops  were clothed in khaki of some form or another, although still provided at regimental level, and improvisesd in a number of ways, exhibiting a wide variety of styles, shades and cloth, and still supplemented by used of the scarlet frock for warmth.  Importantly,  however, the campaign saw the some use of centrally produced khaki clothing based on the  white summer uniform. 
This paragraph should be better re-drafted to more accurately reflect  the process  by which, from the 1850s to 1885 "The British Army adopted khaki for colonial campaign dress."  
JF42 (talk) 15:32, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: If you've got sources, feel free to fix it. oknazevad (talk) 17:59, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  used officially by British troops for the first time during the 1868 Expedition 

message: I've removed the forst link (to an archived "Paint assistant" site. twice the first time without adequate explanation perhaps, but it's been added back in. I can't see how a colour conversion tool that converts from RYB to RGB is useful as evidence that Khaki is a quinary colour? Surely the link quinary color which lists Khaki does that job anyway? Verm the toaster (talk) 00:24, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  How is the link to a color conversion tool a source for Khaki being a quinary color

message: ...and recognizing filter bubbles (I am, FWIW, a fifty-year-old American living in France) and all that, I did an image search on the word "khaki" (above) and averaged the RGB values (using a 1000-pixel-radius Gaussian blur) of all non-white and non-black pixels (below), as a way of assessing the zeitgeist. The resulting RGB value was C4B9A5. This is, presumably, an experiment that others can easily replicate, with different results depending upon your filter-bubble. Bill Woodcock (talk) 09:36, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just as an experiment...