Noob question about Mal's brown coat for costume by Homage2Mal

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Noob question about Mal's brown coat for costume

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POSTED BY: HOMAGE2MAL
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 2, 2012 17:31
SHORT URL: http://bit.ly/JreuNr
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012 6:45 PM

Noob here, needing some help

I'm puting together a costume that will serve both for a Firefly LARP at a game convention and a different costume that is meant to be a steampunk homage to Malcolm Reynolds.

What I'd like to ask is whether anyone here knows, definitively, if Mal's brown coat is actually the same coat from his army uniform. I just re-watched the war flashbacks in Serenity and The Message and b/c of the lighting, it is difficult to tell, although in The Message it doesn't look like the same coat.

A web search wasn't much help - I just got a lot of ads for sales of prop replica coats...

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Wednesday, May 02, 2012 3:42 AM

BYTEMITE

I think it's supposed to be the same coat from the war, and he might even have had it before then. The general thinking is that independent uniforms weren't exactly all that formalized beyond the rank indicators they could apply, and that most soldiers just put together whatever they could scrounge up (some of them even found and wore chainmail underneath their coats, see Zoe). The only thing it sounds like the Independents actually issued to Mal was his trusty service pistol, but even that might have been whatever weapon Mal had available to take with him.

Mal tore off his independent's sergeant patch at some point after the Battle of Serenity Valley (it was sewn on upside down for some reason anyway). The patch would have been on his right right sleeve. He sustained some coat damage to the left sleeve in the pilot episode, which was badly sewn up.

The only aspect that seems even marginally consistent about the independent uniforms is that they all had some manner of coat that was brown, and most of them seemed to have red scarves/hankerchiefs they wore around their necks. I suspect that's a reference to the red hankerchiefs that blue collar workers wore around the turn of the last century when they went on strike, in homage to hardworking "redneck" farmers and in opposition to the rich upper class types who were exploiting the poor. A red hankerchief is as much as symbol of haves versus have-nots as it is a very western trope.

Mal's scarf looks grey in the pilot episode, not sure why, might be sun bleached or might be intentional, not sure what it would symbolize. His scarf IS red in The Message, which depicts an earlier part of the war. Zoe wears a red scarf both times, Bendis wears a red scarf in the pilot episode, Tracy though kinda wears a makeshift brown burlap hankerchief over a red vest over a brown jacket, might be he lost his or supplies were low or something.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2012 5:31 PM

HOMAGE2MAL

Thanks!

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