Brighton, Whitsun weekend 1964. Hundreds of lads in sharp suits, riding Lambrettas down the promenade, each one wearing the same oversized green coat with a ridiculous split tail flapping behind them. None of them had any idea they were wearing a piece of cold-weather kit designed to keep American soldiers alive at minus forty in the hills above Seoul. That is the odd journey of the fishtail parka. Military issue to subcultural uniform in about a decade, and then an icon of British style for the next sixty years.
It is worth understanding why the jacket looks the way it does before getting into the cultural side, because the design drives the story.
What actually makes a parka a fishtail parka
Most people use "parka" to describe any long hooded coat. The fishtail is a specific thing. The name comes from the split in the rear hem, which has two long extensions that resemble a fish's tail when hanging loose. Those tails were not decorative. They fold forwards between the legs and fasten with snap studs to seal the bottom of the coat against wind. When a soldier was moving, the tail flapped free for mobility. When he was standing sentry in a blizzard, it snapped up tight and turned the jacket into something closer to a wearable tent.
So a fishtail parka has three giveaways. The split tail. The snap fastenings at the front hem. And the long drop, usually past mid-thigh, because the whole design assumes you are wearing it over other layers. Anything without those features is a parka but not a fishtail.
The M-48: the one most people forget
The first real fishtail was the M-48, issued by the US Army in 1948 after the bitter lessons of the Ardennes and the Aleutian campaigns during the Second World War. Men had frozen to death in standard field jackets and the Quartermaster Corps wanted something that covered more of the body and layered properly over combat clothing.
The M-48 solved the problem but cost a fortune. Heavy cotton sateen shell, button-in wool pile liner, real wolverine fur trim on the hood. Production was tiny. Around 14,000 were made before it was dropped in favour of a cheaper pattern, and surviving examples now trade for three to four thousand pounds at specialist dealers. You almost never see one in the wild.
If you are reading this and you think you own an M-48, you probably own an M-51. The two look similar at a glance. The M-48 has a squarer cut, heavier materials and the famous wolverine ruff, which was expensive enough that the Army replaced it with synthetic fur almost immediately.
The M-51: the jacket that got famous
Nine months into the Korean War, in 1951, the US Army introduced the M-1951 Parka, Shell, Field (the official nomenclature is a mouthful, which is why collectors just call it the M-51). This was the one that mattered. It kept the fishtail silhouette and the three-piece layering system of its predecessor but stripped out the expensive bits.
The shell is cotton sateen in OG-107 olive green. The button-in pile liner is wool and alpaca blend, soft and surprisingly warm, though it sheds like an angry cat. The hood is separate and ties on, with a synthetic fur ruff that replaced the wolverine. Snap fastenings up the front hem and down the back of the tail. Button closure at the chest covered by a storm flap. Adjustable drawcords at the waist and hem.
Production ran from 1951 to 1956 at US factories, with smaller later runs at Allied depots in West Germany into the early 1960s. By the time the last ones came off the line, the Korean War was long over and warehouses were stuffed with them. That surplus is what made the next chapter possible.
The M-65: the last of the line
The Vietnam War changed what the Army wanted from cold weather kit. Soldiers were operating in conditions where a cotton shell soaked through and stayed wet for days. So in 1968 the Army introduced the M-65 Parka, the last revision of the fishtail pattern.
The upgrades were practical. The cotton sateen shell was replaced with a 65/35 cotton/nylon blend that dried faster and resisted abrasion better. The wool pile liner gave way to a quilted nylon shell filled with polyester batting, lighter but arguably warmer. The hood became fully detachable with a stand collar at the neck so you could wear the jacket without the hood and still get some wind protection. Zip closure replaced the button placket.
Collectors still argue about M-51 versus M-65. The M-51 looks better (the cotton sateen has a depth to it that the blended shell never quite matches) and feels more authentic. The M-65 is objectively more practical. If you want to actually wear one in British weather, the M-65 is probably the right call. If you want the one that matters historically, it is the M-51, because by 1968 the mods had already made the parka theirs.
How it got to Britain
British army surplus shops exploded in the late 1950s. American kit was flooding in through NATO channels, often sold off at pennies on the pound to clear warehouse space. Laurence Corner in London, Silverman's in the East End, and a scattering of smaller shops in Liverpool, Manchester and Brighton stocked rails of M-51s at prices teenagers could afford. A parka cost less than a decent pair of Italian shoes.
For the first wave of mods, that mattered. The mod economy was obsessive about detail but stretched on cash. Most of them worked ordinary jobs, Saturday wages going on Fred Perry shirts, tonic suits, Ivy League loafers, Lambretta parts. A £3 parka that kept their £40 suit clean on a wet scooter ride was the perfect bit of kit.
And that was the real point. The parka was not a style statement in 1962. It was practical gear. You rode your scooter from Sheffield to Margate in the rain, you arrived, you peeled the parka off, and the immaculate mohair underneath was still dry and sharp. The hood did what no crash helmet would do for another ten years. The length protected your trousers from road spray. The fishtail snapped up at the front for extra warmth when you finally stopped moving.
Then a scooter gang in a parka became the visual shorthand for the whole subculture. And from that point the coat stopped being kit and started being costume.
Mods, Quadrophenia and the revival
The original mod scene burned out around 1967 as psychedelia pulled most of them into hippie territory. The parka got dusty. But in 1979 Franc Roddam released Quadrophenia, his film adaptation of The Who's 1973 concept album, and suddenly every fifteen year old in Britain wanted to be Jimmy Cooper. Phil Daniels wears an M-51 through almost the entire film. The scene where he rides down to Brighton in the rain, parka zipped to the chin, is the single most reproduced image in British subcultural cinema.
That second mod revival ran from 1979 into the mid 1980s. Paul Weller and The Jam were the soundtrack. Secret Affair, The Chords, The Lambrettas, Madness (adjacent, not pure mod, but the dress code overlapped) all fed the visual. Sales of surplus M-51s went through the roof, and by 1983 actual surplus was drying up. Reproductions started to appear, most of them badly cut and made from the wrong materials, which is why so many 1980s parkas look lumpy and wrong compared with the genuine article.
A third wave came with Britpop. Oasis, Blur and Ocean Colour Scene all drew on mod imagery, and Liam Gallagher wore a parka so often through 1994 and 1995 that the style became synonymous with Britpop casual. Gallagher's was usually an M-65 rather than an M-51, which tells you something about availability by that point.
How to spot an original
If you are buying vintage, a few tells separate the real thing from the many reproductions and surplus copies made by Eastern European factories in the 1990s.
On an original M-51, the contract label is stitched into the interior near the waist, not the collar. It lists the contract number (starts DA-36- for most original runs), the manufacturer, the stock number and the size. The stock number should begin 8405. The shell should feel like heavy cotton canvas, slightly stiff when new, breaking in over years. The inner pile liner, if it is still with the jacket, should say "Liner, Parka, OG-107" and button in rather than zip.
Reproductions get the outer shape close but usually give themselves away at the details. Too-clean stitching. Plastic snap studs instead of brass. The wrong shade of green (originals are a specific OG-107 olive that reads almost warm; modern reproductions tend towards a flatter, greyer green). Anything with "Alpha Industries" or "Fostex" labels is a modern reproduction, which is fine if that is what you want, but it is not vintage.
Price ranges as of 2026: a well-preserved M-51 with matching liner and original hood sits at around £450 to £700 on the specialist market. A genuinely mint example with documented provenance can push past £1,000. M-65s are cheaper, usually £200 to £400 in good condition, partly because more were made and partly because collectors still consider them the lesser jacket. Anything priced below those bands should be viewed with scepticism until you have inspected the labels.
The parka today
The fishtail parka is one of those rare garments that works on two levels at once. You can wear it straight, as cold weather outerwear, and it does the job as well as most modern equivalents. You can also wear it as a cultural signal, knowing full well that anyone who knows will read the reference.
That double life is why it keeps coming back. Every ten years or so, a new wave of kids discovers it through a film, a band or a magazine shoot, and the cycle starts over. The jacket does not care. It was designed to last decades, and it does. There are M-51s still in regular use that are now older than the grandfathers of the boys who first bought them off the surplus rail on Euston Road in 1962.
Not many items of clothing can claim that. Most fashion is disposable, and most military kit looks out of place the moment the war ends. The fishtail parka somehow cheated both. It stayed useful and it stayed meaningful, which is a trick not many garments manage.
If you are thinking about buying one, buy the one you will actually wear. An M-65 for the weather. An M-51 for the history. A modern Alpha Industries reproduction if you want the look without the hassle. All of them trace back to the same moment in 1948 when an American quartermaster decided soldiers needed a better coat, and in doing so, accidentally invented the uniform of a British subculture that had not even been born yet.