For Decades, Italians Have Salvaged Old American Military Uniforms in This Open-Air Market
The khaki and camouflage have traveled from battlefield to clothes rack and sometimes stage and screen.
For Decades, Italians Have Salvaged Old American Military Uniforms in This Open-Air Market
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Military uniforms have been a mainstay at the market for decades. Daniela De Lorenzo
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Early each morning, keys turn in locks on the ground floor shops along Pugliano street in the Italian town of Ercolano. Doors open to reveal shiny sequin dresses, furs in a range of browns, and jeans from the 1970s plus a slew of military uniforms, displayed on hangers, dangling from boxes, or draped on white sheets. Many of the clothes worn by American soldiers who stormed Italy in the 1940s now live here, at one of the largest markets in Southern Italy.