Travis Bickle is a Vietnam veteran. DeNiro’s character demonstrates how disillusioned soldiers came home from Vietnam and rejected reintegration with the society they left behind as a response to the atrocities their country ordered them to commit. Even in their hair—grown to extend to “non-regulation length” or shaved into rebellious mohawks—these veterans combined dissonant fashion choices with their leftover military gear as a way of thumbing their noses at the nation that let them down (not to mention the sheer practicality of continuing to wear a perfectly usable wardrobe of clothing).

These style choices spread and an archetype was born; civilians too, started to wear military surplus as a way of broadcasting their displeasure with America’s government. The disillusioned veteran style, with a rumpled M-65 hanging open from shoulders, became a funhouse mirror image of the square-jawed, square-haired, “squares” who we associate with the concept of honorable military service. It’s not that Vietnam made serving in the military cool, it made subverting the military cool.

Today, military surplus inspired looks are seamlessly integrated into mainstream men’s style, from bomber jackets to combat boots. But that wasn’t always the case. As GQ’s Liza Corsillo pointed out in her reflection on Taxi Driver’s style, at the time DeNiro’s wardrobe was a “proto-punk style statement.” You don’t have to look very hard to see the film as a countercultural callout. A Vietnam veteran returns home and sets about righting the wrongs he sees in his city (imagined or otherwise), fantasizing about cleansing a rotting nation. The question the very existence of Travis Bickle begs is: Why are we waging war to inflict our way of life on other nations when so much is terribly broken here?

This message resonated with a disaffected public. Screenwriter Paul Schrader recalls going to a early sold out screening of Taxi Driver to see a line around the block filled with young men already cosplaying as Bickle.

“Some day a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets,” Travis Bickle predicts ahead of some of some of the film’s darkest moments. This statement is sometimes read as a blind statement of xenophobic rage (The Guardian has claimed Bickle “embodies the collective psyche of Trump supporters”), and Bickle’s anger and mental illness shouldn’t be discounted. But, this line can also be taken as a condemnation of a failed state bent on spreading its tentacles across the world. No, Bickle is not a hero. He is not even a good person. But some part of his dislocated darkness is understandable, even relatable. Travis Bickle does evil things, but Travis Bickle is also a product of America and his American experience.

Schrader identifies the samef feelings of alienation and apathy experienced with such unmoored intensity by Bickle as his motivation for writing Taxi Driver. He told Pauline Kael, the inspiration for the script was deeply personal:

“It’s me, without any brains... The man who moves through the city like a rat through the sewer; the man who is constantly surrounded by people, yet has no friends. The absolute symbol of urban loneliness. That’s the thing I’d been living; that was my symbol, my metaphor.”

Director Martin Scorsese also sees the M-65 and post-Vietnam fashion generally, as an expression of the alienating and dislocating forces of American life. Early in his career, Scorsese had his own neo-hippie phase. For him, the appeal was that, “there was a part of me that wanted to erase everything of where I came from. I had a feeling that I had escaped. I was wearing those cowboy shirts, our hair grew a little...It was really good.”

By identifying as the drifting soldier home from a tour of duty, a young man could recreate his identity, free from burdensome regional identifiers and painful reminders of home. He could, perhaps, be free.

Though there are poetic reasons for the M-65’s popularity, there are also capitalist explanations for the boom in military style jackets. As soldiers came home, they threw away their old illusions but kept the jackets. But not everyone who wanted a jacket was a veteran. The jacket’s manufacturer, Alpha Industries, established two civilian-facing companies, Concord Industries and Intercon Apparel, to distribute M-65 clones to the masses in 1970 (today, Alpha sells the jackets directly to the retail market). Though the field jacket had been a staple of military life since the 1940s, it wasn’t until the M-65 that the jacket became available to the masses; you need manufacturers to comply with a trend before it can become a phenomenon.

The resonant symbolism combined with the ready availability of the jackets made for a powerful combination—massive demand, massive supply—that would resonate for decades. While Bickle was the most prominent alienated pop culture loner to don the jacket, many would follow in his footsteps. John Rambo (Rambo), Frank Serpico (Serpico), and Lindsay Weir (Freaks and Geeks) would all wear the M-65 before the 20th century drew to a close.

It wasn’t just fictitious characters who had a hand in popularizing the M-65. A few years before “Taxi Driver” hit theaters, John Lennon famously wore a similar jacket, the M-OG-107 Type III Utility Uniform, at 1972 Madison Square Garden concert.

Today, more than 40 years since the end of the Vietnam War, the M-65 jacket doesn’t carry quite the same transgressive weight today that it once did. But, because of the cultural power the M-65 had in the ’70s, it remains surrounded by an aura of cool, even if its widespread use has taken the edge of its once-radical connotations.The average menswear fan may not be able to articulate the precise history of the jacket, but they understand this cultural legacy, and that is part of what keeps it on runways and on department store mannequins.

Runway shows continue to incorporate the M-65 look into their shows, in part because it lends any outfit a transgressive flair, even if today’s audiences aren’t sure exactly why that is. Japanese designers have helped keep Americana in the limelight for years. Brands like Hiroki Nakamura’s Visvim and Daiki Suzuki’s Engineered Garments are just two brands recreating top-tier field jackets. Streetwear brands like BAPE and Supreme have tried their own spins on the M-65. Supreme even placed Bickle (fittingly wearing his M-65) as the centerpiece of a signature T-shirt design in the first years of its existence—gaining more notoriety with anniversary re-issues. Both Bickle's and Supreme's clear cynicism towards New York and, more broadly, American life, makes the connection fairly understandable. Perhaps most importantly, military surplus stores are still selling army green jackets to every emerging generation. Alpha Industries still sells a version of the jacket today.

Though American culture has changed, much of the discontent with America stays the same. And though other counterculture styles have risen and fallen since Saigon fell, the M-65 remains a fashion staple. The M-65 is still waiting for any disaffected youths feeling the crushing weight an empire that is still fighting wars with no clear objective in countries far away, or for someone who simply thinks they look good in Olive Green 107.