CheapAssAirsoftGuns

Some fashion tips from a costume pro’.

Making a uniform or battledress or a costume is often a reflection of your own social and cultural background and this can result in teams and individuals all being dressed in Biritish or American BDU. Casting the net wider and reflecting the diversity of available airsoft weaponry is the purpose of this article.

The Author, G Man

You can make up a whole selection of outfits quite cheaply using the tricks and dodges that I shall describe. Aim for the flavour rather than the precise detail of a character. Here are some of the inspirations for characters I have made up in the past.

I made up my Afghan character with a shirt/waistcoat from an asian store, an Afghan or Pakistani flat cap, an Indian black sacking bag and a prayer mat from Ikea. To give you an idea of price the most expensive item was the shirt /waistcoat set at £35 and the cheapest was the prayer mat £1.50p. You can wear a camoflage jacket if you wish, or old style soviet webbing. If you watch TV documentaries you can see what the middle eastern gunman about town is wearing, on Sky News I noticed a Northern Alliance fighter totting an old American grease gun in the land of the Kalashnikov. What’s that about then?

The Russian Afghan War outfit started when I found a fur lined waistcoat in a girlfriends closet. Now, normally I don’t try her clothes on but in this case I thought it would go down well with a brown fur cosssack hat with a hammer and sickle insignia which I bought at A&A Airsoft in Newport and a pair of urban disruptive BDU bottoms.

A chance find of a 1945 mint condition officers trench coat was the reason for buying a wood and metal shotgun and a slouch hat for a Secial Branch Officer in the Malaya emergency.

A medieval fez which I bought at a re-enactors fair was the inspiration for a Kings African Rifles character, red fez, military shirt, white gloves, khaki shorts, black woolen tights, long socks, army boots and a Mauser rifle. The latter in the absence of a Lee Enfield.

Royal Ulster Constabulary … I bought a dark green winter windproof coat at Primark, followed by a dark green peaked hat at Marcruss in Hotwells in Bristol. A belt and holster with a Browning Hi Power and an MP5 would be optimum but I settled for a G36.

SOG, Studies and Observation Group were deep penetration reconnaissance specialists in Vietnam. I bought my tiger-stripe outfit at USMC in Southsea. US special forces often used the AK47 so that the enemy could not locate them by the distinctive differences in the noise of their gunfire, also the Thompson SMG would not be out of place earlier in the conflict.

The recent release of the FN Fal by King Arms makes me think that a Rhodesian army scout might be the next project. Lightly equipped these guys were often dropped by helicopter near sites where a terrorist raid had taken place to intercept retiring tangoes.

I’ve mentioned a few places where you can buy useful bits and pieces. There are plenty more. Camden market in London is great, the internet, militaria suppliers, re-enactors markets and military displays are good places to build up your stock of artifacts. Just a little aside here, I don’t wear insignia or decorations I haven’t earned but that’s a personal choice.

When you make up a character you don’t have to pay out a lot of money but buy one thing that is quite expensive and this will set the whole thing off.

Don’t make the mistake of weathering or dirtying a uniform to make it more ‘authentic’. Soldiers the world over try to be as smart in appearance as they can in the circumstances and even if wear and tear has diminished their uniform the sign of a good soldier is always a clean weapon. Likewise try to start a day with a clean pair of boots if you deal with military people they respect the effort that you put into your personal appearance.

It is possible to become a clean boot fetishist piling on layer after layer of polish. You can buy a kind of easy application polish with an instant gloss in Lidls or Aldis which will save you a lot of trouble. If you have a pair of tall boots or jackboots get a lambswool buffer fitted on a power drill otherwise you’ll be polishing all day.

When you wear an outfit that represents another nationality or ideology try to throw something into the mix which belongs to that culture, for instance my Russian has a tin of sardines in his grenade bag. There are Russian shops in London which can supply anything you require, look on the internet. Try to see inside the phsyche of the character. Why did they do what they did? What their motivation was or is? If you want a role model try Richard Attenborough as the RSM in the film Guns at Batisi. At the end of the day how you wear clothes and your bearing can be just as important as the clothes themselves.

To sum up then, if you want something with a bit of personality to it, find your inspiration either in the form of a weapon or a piece of kit. Do some research, books, internet or buy a large scale figure of your subject and use that as a model of what you want the end result to look like. Buy stuff that you can mix and match then get out there and knock ‘em dead.

Article and photos by G Man