This is how Canada's iconic Mountie uniforms are made

• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or "Mounties," are known for their iconic uniforms that feature the iconic scarlet tunic referred to as the "Red Serge."
• While modern Mounties' everyday uniforms are more in line with standard police attire, the wool and satin-lined Red Serge is still used for ceremonial events.
• We visited the tailor shop where a team of 20 tailors performs the alterations for the approximately 1,000 cadets that graduate from the Academy each year.
• We also stopped by the leather shop, where leather crafters custom-fit each pair of high-leather Strathcona boots before being issued to the cadets.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: These men and women are some of the newest members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, also known as the Mounties. The RCMP is Canada's federal police force, known worldwide for their iconic scarlet tunics, referred to as the Red Serge. Each cadet gets fitted for their tunic about halfway through their 26-week training program.

Cadet: It's a really exciting moment. It makes you very proud to be here.

Cadet: When you put it on, you feel pride.

Cadet: I cannot believe it when I saw myself in the mirror.

Narrator: While this is what you're likely to see Mounties wearing in the field, the Red Serge is worn at ceremonial events. It's part of what's known as the kit that's issued to the 1,000 cadets that graduate from the RCMP training academy each year. Along with the tunic, the uniform includes trousers known as breeches, a Stetson hat, a Sam Browne belt, and a pair of high leather Strathcona boots. The tunics are made by a company in Quebec before being shipped here, to the RCMP Academy in Regina, Saskatchewan. They're made of wool and include a satin lining.

Sean Lussier: Right now they're not as comfortable as you would think, but they are custom-made primarily for the look, so they're not gonna be as functional to do your everyday kind of job in them.

Narrator: Here at the academy, a team of 20 tailors perform all the alterations for each cadet.

Nila Filoteo: About eight of them are custom tailors, and the rest are general tailors, and general tailors usually do the pants and the breeches, and the custom tailors are the one that does the red tunic. We take them apart, we put them together, and do the alterations.

Narrator: Alterations for each tunic can take up to two days.

Tailor: Now you try on the overalls.

Narrator: If an officer outgrows his or her uniform, they simply request a new one at no additional charge to them. According to the RCMP, the total cost of each cadet's uniform, including the Red Serge and their normal duty clothing, comes out to about 4,500 Canadian dollars. And about $500 of that cost is for the boots. Each pair is handcrafted by the Alberta Boot Company before being sent to the leather shop at the RCMP Academy, where each pair is custom fit to each cadet.

Rod Johnson: So, we look after all of the brown ceremonial leather. Each pair of boots is fit to each individual cadet, whether that means stretching them or making them smaller. To stretch them, they are soaked in a tub and then we open them up with a series of blocks. A block that mimics the calf, a block that mimics the shin, and then, depending on the amount we need to stretch them, we open them up to the appropriate size that we need for each individual. Once we reach that size by blocking them like that, then we put them in our drying booth, and they dry for about a week so that they will take that shape permanently. We do up to 32 pairs of boots in a week, and then they're issued to the cadet, and they begin to do the arduous task of putting 20 to 40 different coats of polish on them so that they no longer look one-dimensional. After the cadets are done polishing them, they look more three-dimensional.

Narrator: They might look shiny, but these pictures don't quite do them justice. When you see them in person, these boots boast an almost otherworldly sheen. To get there, it takes a lot of polish.

Chris Darcy: We used to make them pay for it, but now Her Majesty decides she's gonna buy us polish. This is one of the techniques. The idea here is to build up the color. You see, the difference in color is pretty drastic for polished boot and unpolished boot. We get it, it's superhot water, and put a coat of polish on here. All we're doing is take the hot sponge, and we simply are rubbing the polish in. And it looks like it's doing nothing, and all that's happening is we're filling in the pores. So we would do about 20 coats of these. One of the tricks we do, though, is we take pantyhose. You put an old pair of socks in there, and it's kind of like when you sand your car, you start with coarse grit and go to a finer grit, and these pantyhose are actually a little bit finer grit, and we'd actually just brush it off. The longer you go, you start getting character in it, and it has a bit of a marbling effect as it takes the grain of the leather. All those memories you make shining boots with your troop mates. Each pair of boots kind of tells its own story.

Lussier: The Red Serge is just one of those things that just kinda stands out as being as Canadian as it can be.

Johnson: That, you know, signifies to them that they're becoming a Mountie 'cause that is, you know, one of the iconic symbols that separate the Mounties from other police forces in the world.


Read the original article on Insider