During the early part of WWI, U.S. soldiers wore Russet Marching Shoes, which were made of machine-sewn calfskin and a featured a feather lining, that did not hold up to the French terrain. Soldiers were developing trench foot, a condition in which the foot rots due to prolonged exposure to moisture and cold temperatures. So, in January of 1918, General John Pershing of the U.S. Army approved changes to the Russet Marching Shoe, including thicker leather, waterproofing, a triple-thick sole and iron toe cleats; named the Trench Boot, and often called the “Pershing Boot” after the General, the updated footwear helped ward off trench foot, along with new requirements that soldiers check a partner’s feet each day and rub their own feet down with whale oil.

Post-WWI, the Army issued its troops various incarnations of Service Shoes, which were aesthetically similar to the Trench Boot, but were designed more for comfort and style than for combat use. Service Shoes of the ’30s featured polished leather uppers, toecaps with brogue holes and leather outsoles. By the end of the decade, there were two main versions of the Service Shoe in use: the first was unlined with a stacked leather heel; the second, also known as the Garrison Shoe, was lined with fabric and featured a rubber heel, smaller eyelets and lightweight laces.

In 1940 and 1941, as the U.S. contemplated its entrance into WWII, the Army conducted field maneuvers to prepare itself for battle. Unfortunately, the Service Shoe did not hold up well during these tests, as the leather sole wore through within three weeks. As a result, in September of 1941, the Army introduced the Type II Service Shoe, which featured a composition sole that featured a rubber tap attached to a leather outsole just forward of the shank. These changes doubled the life the shoe, although additional changes were made once the war started in order to conserve materials, such as using reclaimed rubber, lighter insoles, cork filler, wood-core heels and zinc coated steel nails, which had a negative impact on the shoes comfort and durability.

In June of 1943, with an eye on improving the water resistance of the Type II Service Shoe, the Army introduced the Type III Service Shoe, which featured reversed leather, rough side out, no to cap, a Goodyear welted sole and reinforcing rivets. Due to their “roughout” material, the Type III Service Shoe did not require polishing and soldiers often increased the shoe’s water resistance by rubbing it down with waterproofing grease. Like the previous versions of the Service Shoe, the Type III was meant to be worn with M-38 Dismounted Troops canvas lace-up leggings, which had a strap that looped under the Service Shoe and were then secured around the leg via a series of hooks and grommets. The Type III was used through the end of the war, and then, along with the Type II, as a Garrison Shoe during peacetime.

Despite its decades-long military history, the Service Shoe did not enter pop culture until 1963 with the release of John Sturges WWII POW film, The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen. In the film, McQueen’s character Captain Virgil Hilts wears the Type III Service Boot with an A-2 Bomber Jacket and a pair of khakis. The Great Escape did not only help spur the movement toward military style in the U.S., but also created fervent interest in Service Shoes in Japan. These days, Trench Boots and Service Shoes are deeply ingrained fashion staples that are produced by everyone from high fashion designers to reproduction brands, including Viberg, Buzz Rickson’s and Oak Street Bootmakers.

Another breakthrough in boots came around the time of the U.S.’s entrance into WWII with the introduction of the Paratrooper Jump Boot, part of Major William P. Yarbourgh’s groundbreaking paratrooper uniform. The boot was calf-length, lace-up and featured a leather upper, a rubber sole and a slanted heel designed so it wouldn’t snag on the lip of an aircraft door. Then, in November of 1943, the U.S. Military authorized the M1943 Combat Boot (also known as the Double Buckle Boot), which featured reversed leather, rough side out, to absorb waterproofing oils, a one piece molded synthetic or reclaimed rubber sole and a high-top double buckle cuff that replaced the inconvenient leggings soldiers had previously worn.

Although the M1943 Combat Boot was green lighted in 1943, it didn’t become widely available to soldiers until 1945, near the end of WWII. Just a handful of years later, it was replaced with the M1948 Russet Combat Boot, which was standardized on December 13, 1948, but didn’t see significant action until a couple of years later during the Korean War. Named after its deep reddish brown color, the boot was a similar shape to the Paratrooper Jump Boot and featured eleven eyelets, a cap toe, a smooth leather upper, a Goodyear-welt construction and a full sole with a diamond tread pattern. The boot was extremely popular with soldiers and saw use until the early ’60’s, even though it was officially replaced in September of 1954 when the military adopted the Black Leather Combat Boot to go with its new Army Green uniforms.

Amazingly, for the next fifty years, soldiers wore variations of the Black Combat Boot and often owned multiple pairs for different uses. In fact, over time, it became common for soldiers to purchase their own pairs of non-issue black leather combat boots as long as those boots met the Army’s requirements for appearance and performance. As a result, soldiers in the ’80’s and ’90’s might use any combination of the 1954 Black Leather Combat Boot, the McNamara Boot (a cost-cutting boot with no cap toe introduced in 1962), the Direct Molded Sole Black Combat Boot (standardized in 1967), the Mildew and Water Resistant Direct Molded Sole Black Combat Boot (standardized in 1967) and the Infantry Combat Boot, Temperate Weather Type I (lined with GORE-TEX®), among others. The Black Leather Combat Boot was only phased out after the Army introduced its digital camouflage utility uniforms in 2002.

With the Army producing so many variations of the Combat Boot, combined with the practice of soldiers purchasing their own pairs, it’s no surprise that many of the boots made their way into surplus stores, eventually spreading into civilian populations in the U.S. and abroad (and, although this section focuses specifically on U.S. Army Combat Boots, many other militaries have produced their own influential combat boots over the past century). Since the ’60’s, the boots have become a staple of numerous subcultures for their utilitarian looks and comfort, from punks to skinheads to goths to metal-heads to some BDSM practitioners. Unsurprisingly, mainstream fashion eventually appropriated the Combat Boot and thousands of versions can now be found everywhere from fast fashion outlets to the most revered high-end designers of our time, including Ann Demeulemeester, Jil Sander, Julius, Junya Watanabe, Prada, Rick Owens and many, many more.

The Jungle Boot is often attributed to the Vietnam War, but the U.S. Army utilized variations of the boot in jungle environments prior to WWII and introduced a standardized form in August of 1942 for use in the Pacific Theater. The Jungle Boot was made to be lightweight, durable and quick-drying; it featured a canvas duck top, attached tongue (to keep out mud and insects) and a corrugated rubber sole.

For a handful of years after WWII, the U.S. Army had no need for the Jungle Boot, as its main engagement was the Korean War and the country’s moderate climate did not necessitate a tropical-weather boot. However, as the U.S. Army began involving itself in Vietnam in the ’50s, it worked to develop an updated boot, known as the Okinawa Boot, which was a modified Double Buckle Boot with a combination leather and canvas upper and a Vibram® sole. The boot was named for the early U.S. advisors who departed for Vietnam from Okinawa.

As the U.S. escalated its attacks in the early ’60’s, the Army initially shipped its soldiers WWII Jungle Boots, but they performed poorly in Vietnam’s highly varied terrain and climate. So, in 1962, the Army introduced the boot that is now generally accepted as the Jungle Boot, which featured a combination black leather and OG107 nylon-webbing upper and a self-cleaning cleated sole. The boot utilized a Direct Molded Sole, a technology developed by Wellco, one of the Army’s main contractors, which produced five-thousand pairs of boots per day during the mid-’60s. In 1965, the Army introduced a third pattern of the Jungle Boot (the second pattern featured negligible changes), which had a nylon ankle reinforcement band and a spike protective thin metal plate in the DMS sole, which helped protect soldiers’ feet from Punji sticks (booby traps made of sharpened, and sometimes poisoned, pieces of bamboo). The third pattern of the Jungle Boot was considered successful enough that it stayed in use in mild weather for decades after the Vietnam War.

Although the Jungle Boot is a far less ubiquitous model in fashion than the Combat Boot, it has still made a major impact, in particular, by inspiring the use of combination canvas and leather uppers on both boots and sneakers, as well as helping to popularize the use of CORDURA® nylon (which was used on later variations of the boot). Helmut Lang, Junya Watanabe, Michael Bastian, Nike and Visvim have all produced their own versions of the boot over the past fifteen years.

The term Desert Boot inhabits a unique space in fashion in that it refers to two separate styles of boot (that were both first produced to inhabit desert terrain). The first form of the Desert Boot was conceived in 1941 by Nathan Clark, a member of Britain’s 8th Army in Burma during WWII and the great-grandson of James Clark, co-founder of the Quaker Footwear Company (now known as Clarks) in 1825. Clark noticed that off-duty South African soldiers stationed in Burma had ditched their traditional military boots for lightweight suede, crepe-soled chukka boots they’d commissioned from cobblers in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili bazaar; the suede upper of the boot was more comfortable in the hot climate and the crepe sole offered better grip on sand and rock than traditional soles.

Infatuated by the boot, Clark began sending sketches back to his brother at the Clarks Head Offices in Somerset, England. However, Clark’s brother, as well as the company’s board of directors, found little interest in the design. Clark continued tinkering with his design (deciding on a stitched-down sole with an orange thread and a suede upper), but nothing came of it until 1949 when he was able to get some of the boots produced and brought them to the Chicago Shoe Fair. Americans instantly fell in love with the affordability, simplicity and “Britishness” of the Desert Boot (despite it being more South African and Egyptian than anything). Not long after, Esquire featured the boot in its pages and its sales took off. By the end of the ’60s, Clarks was exporting the boot across the globe and it had become a footwear staple that both defied and defined fashion. These days, Clarks is still producing their iconic Desert Boot (and collaborating with brands like Supreme), but there are many higher-end versions to covet, as well, from Bottega Veneta to Common Projects to Ermenegildo Zegna to 31. Phillip Lim.

The second form of the Desert Boot was created by the U.S. Army during the beginning of the Persian Gulf War. At the outset of the war, the Army supplied its soldiers with the Black Combat Boot and the Jungle Boot. While the Jungle Boot outperformed the Black Combat Boot, it also trapped sand and did not keep soldiers’ feet warm during winter months. At the time, Wellco, the producer of the Jungle Boot, was awarded a development contract by the U.S. Army Natick laboratory to create a new boot for the war and, with suggestions from General Norman Schwarzkopf, the U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf region, the company began producing an updated version of the Jungle Boot, now known as the Desert Boot. By removing vent eyelets from the upper and the steel plate from the sole, as well as producing the boot in a Desert Tan colorway, Wellco created a boot that kept out the sand, held a more consistent temperature and blended in with the environment.

The Desert Boot was deemed such a success that an updated version, known as the Tan Combat Boot, became the standard footwear for U.S. Army and Marine soldiers in 2002. Both the Army and USMC have their own unique versions (one for Hot Weather and one for Temperate Weather), but all of the boots come in an entirely tan colorway and feature water resistant and breathable rough side out cattle hide leather, a plain toe with nylon panels on the upper, a leather comfort collar, a combination speed lace and eyelet lacing system, a cushioned midsole and a non-marking, oil and flame resistant, rubber lug outsole. The boots are meant to match the digital camouflage utility uniforms that were standardized for all military personnel (excluding the Coast Guard) in 2008.

Over the past five years, thanks to Kanye West and Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo, the U.S. Army Desert Boot has arguably become even more iconic than the Clarks version. Infatuated with civilian military style, each designer has created a footwear empire based on the Desert Boot silhouette. West’s Adidas Yeezy Boost 750 and most of his mainline boots, as well as Fear of God’s Military Sneakers all riff on the Desert Boot. Interestingly, West has also riffed on the Clarks version through his Crepe Boot, albeit in subtler ways.

Although the German Army Trainer is now widely known as a quintessential high-end sneaker due to Martin Margiela’s reinterpretation and dissemination of the model, the GAT has a relatively muddled history. Athletics giant adidas claims to have created the sneaker in the 1980’s as a standard issue model, known as the BW-Sport, for the Federal German Army, and the GAT does share unmistakable design details with classic adidas sneakers from the 1950s, such as the Samba and the Rom. However, the Bundeswehr History Museum in Dredsen has records that indicate the design was created by Puma—another wrinkle in the brotherly feud between Adi and Rudolf Dassler, the respective founders of adidas and Puma, who broke apart their co-owned company, Dassler Brothers, in 1948 supposedly due to a WWII related feud. What isn’t up for debate is that the trainer appeared before the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, was issued to up to 500,000 male and female soldiers and became widely available in European surplus stores once the Federal German Army was downsized.

In 1998, Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela (who debuted his eponymous label in the same year the GAT became available to civilians) outfitted models in the sneaker for his Spring/Summer 1999 “Artisanal” runway presentation. For the show, Margiela and his design team added new laces and insoles, but they also customized additional pairs around the same time, embossing the tongues with the label’s numerical branding, hand painting the midsoles and adding their own graffiti before shipping the sneakers off to retail stores; the sneakers, labeled as Graffiti Sports Shoes, also came with a card that encouraged buyers to “Feel free to add your own graffiti.”

A few years, later Margiela began producing his own version of the sneaker, known as the Replica, adding paint splatters and a wide range of premium materials, among other details, to various renditions. In the mid-2000s, Dior Homme, then under the direction of Hedi Slimane, introduced the B01, its own version of the GAT. Since then, the popularity of the trainer has exploded, becoming one of the most common sneaker silhouettes for designers to riff on, behind maybe only the Stan Smith and the Air Force 1. A wide range of brands from Epaulet to Hender Scheme to Svensson to Moncler produce their own form of the GAT, most of which make only minimal adjustments to the original. adidas makes its own version of the sneaker, as well, and vintage pairs are still available on online marketplaces such as Grailed.