Tiger Stripe camouflage uniform

Description

• The very first tiger stripe design was a locally-made copy of the French lizard pattern produced for the Vietnamese Marine Corps (Thữy Quân Lục-Chiến), first produced in 1957. The pattern incorporates bold black stripes over lesser brownish-drab stripes & light green trace elements, with an olive green base color. Production of this design ended in 1967, although units continued to wear the pattern until 1970. Illustrated below are the original pattern (far left), followed by two variants designated “Vietnamese Marines sparse” (first produced in 1959 and often mistakenly referred to as VNMC First Pattern) and “Vietnamese Marines dense” (first produced in 1968), also referred to by collectors as “sea wave” or VNMC Second Pattern. Consensus suggests both textiles and uniforms were all produced in South Vietnam, but that 2nd pattern uniforms may also have been produced in the Republic of Korea.