What color brown was the original SA/SS brownshirt?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Bob Coleman is your man here. He is a very advanced SA collector, but also owned very rare SS brownshirt blouses and so forth.

God only knows all of this worked in 1927. It is hard enough to reconstruct what happened in 1935-6, and we have included here for you
a lot of data. You can easily see from my data that there were at least two different colors of cotton used for blouses, and so forth.
I can only generalize about the epoch for which I have data, and that is from the 1930s onwards. Wim has read all the relevant records
and published much relevant data in his wonderful books, and he answered you, too.

[dimitrov2012]

[QUOTE=Wilhelm Saris;1712447]FB: you are right by this, I think. They did wear what they could
find in stocks (either from Germany or Austria). By about 1929 the
color became lighter and was in fact what they called "Das Braunhemd".

Another interesting thing, according to Gerhard Rossbach's book, the Lettow shirt was also called 'der hitlerhemd' for awhile and in its darker brown version was seen extensively during the 1927 reichsparteitag.

Strangely enough, in 1929, Hitler took to wearing a completely different brownshirt, (different buttons,added belt hooks,etc) which ,as you said, was indeed lighter in color and referred to as 'Das Braunhemd' This 'reformed' brownshirt was, for some reason, no longer called the 'hitlerhemd'

[dimitrov2012]

I have owned several of these early shirts and the color on all of them was similar to the RZM pattern. The early tunics and kepis worn with the tunic were a darker chocolate brown.

Bob, of the chocolate brown shirts you owned, do you recall if the buttons were silver/gold metal or pearlescent? The lettow shirt was unique in its shirt sleeve cut, as well as collar buttons and smaller buttons above and below the pockets. Am I correct that the basic brownshirt from 1930 onward had metal buttons?

[dimitrov2012]

These swatches are very helpful! thanks, sir!

[helmet2id]

if you want one of those stephen wolf is your best bet - you'd better have very deep pockets indeed

indeed!

[dimitrov2012]

Ok, so where can I find Mr. Wolf?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

These swatches are very helpful! thanks, sir!

I do my best. I follow black SS uniforms, which are somewhat later than your 1927, but in the process I have learned a lot from Wim, who really is
the authority as is Bob Coleman.

The Zeugmeisterei in the SA and then the RZM date precisely from the 1926-1928 epoch, if the Uniformenmarkt is to be believed.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

We all may also be the victim that the persons who colored these images of the epoch used a brown ink or whatever that overshot reality, too.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The van Eekeling book ca. 1934 is also a nice source on the evolution of early NSDAP, SA and SS uniform.

What this so called von Lettow shirt (in honor of the guerilla hero of German resistance in Africa?) widely worn in society?

I am not aware of this fact, but it is not my thing.

[dimitrov2012]

We all may also be the victim that the persons who colored these images of the epoch used a brown ink or whatever that overshot reality, too.

yeah, for that reason, I didn't include the colorizations, because so often, they're guesswork, and usually inaccurate. Until I can locate an actual shirt photo, I can not be sure, so if I can get help to locate a collector, who owns one of these ultra-rare shirts