A True Urban Grey

It’s got to start somewhere, though we’re never quite sure where that somewhere is. Propper’s product designs often start with systematic field testing, customer feedback, our own experiences, or even an offhand “what if?”. Sometimes, however, inspiration comes from a monkey running around in dirty clothes. For this deep look into color, we thought we’d give you a peek behind the curtain at Propper’s design process and color obsession.

If you’re familiar with Mil-spec Monkey (MSM) you may have seen some of his recent posts searching for a real urban grey. His goal is to find a truer grey that blends well into the urban world we all spend a majority of our time. The tactical industry's grey has landed more on a cool blue-grey. As the monkey is finding out, the real-world grey tends to pick up a lot of browns and ultimately be a warmer color. 

What color grey is "correct” is of course all a matter of how you intend to use it. The cooler grey Propper uses in many of our uniforms, hats, and bags is more of a standard uniform color, and not necessarily intended to be a camouflage for urban environments. That being said, the popularity of greys and urban camos such as A-TACS LE leads us to take a second look and see if there’s a need for more camouflage grey. 

Picking up from MSM’s real world experiments, we decided to look at some of our own local environments to examine some of our existing colors, as well as some samples provided by the monkey. Please note that the photos below are only from one location with full sun light, and may appear different depending on the screen you’re viewing them on.

As you can see the various shades we offer range from light grey and black to coyote and brown in our Tactical Pant. We also brought some of our A-TACS camouflage patterns in our 6-panel cap which have more organic patterns and earth tones. In this location, the A-TACS AU tends to do the best job of approximating dirt and dirty concrete, and tends to do so in the shade as well.

If we look at MSM’s samples they tend to approximate the shade of concrete better- but in a solid color. As you move from shaded areas to full sun, and from asphalt to different types of concrete and stone, the colors take on different shades and blend better or worse depending on the conditions. If this exercise confirms anything, it’s that it would be impossible to have a color or pattern that performs in every environment, but MSM is narrowing in on a good starting point.

One step in every new product is working with the fabrics to ensure our new colors perform to our existing standards. This all starts in our calibrated shade room where we can test colors under various lighting conditions and match the fabric against our standard. The same process is repeated on an ongoing basis to ensure that as we buy new fabric for existing products, the shade does not shift over time. If we bring the various urban grey shades into the shade room, we are able to evaluate the color and try to identify a pantone color we can match to.

If you look at Propper’s color assortment, you’ll find that there’s a lot of black, khaki, olive, and navy. These four color show up in almost every uniform product because of their wide popularity as uniform colors across the country. One challenge we face with such rigid consistency is finding the right color and matching to it over the course of decades. What we strive to maintain across our various products and fabrics is a true color match so that a khaki BDU Trouser matches not only a BDU Coat, but also our new khaki Summerweight short. It’s not an easy challenge, but it’s a goal we’ve committed to, and something our customers can expect. 

I want to ask our readers- is this something you could see yourself wearing? What products would you like to see made in this color pallet? What other colors or patterns do you wish were offered? Contact us and let us know.

See all of MSM’s research here.