The United States Marine Corps is unique among the five branches of the Armed Forces of the United States in how it classifies its Noncommissioned Officers. While the other branches have Noncommissioned Officers (E-4 to E-6, except the USAF which is E-5 and E-6) and all higher grades as Senior Noncommissioned Officers, the Marines designate Enlisted personnel in grades E-4 and E-5 as Noncommissioned Officers and E-6 to and higher as Staff Noncommissioned Officers (SNCOs).
And the importance the Corps places on the role played by SNCOs in the development of the welfare, morale, discipline and efficiency of the Marines under their leadership is reflected in the fact that, of all Enlisted personnel, only SCNCOs are authorized to wear an Evening Dress Uniform. What’s more, the Corps created a unique sleeve chevron for wear on the Evening Coat —a distinctive gold-on-scarlet insignia that recalls the design used in the 1890s.
Use our USMC Staff Noncommissioned Officer Uniform Builder to assemble an entire Evening Dress Uniform from scratch, or to select those items you need to augment an existing Evening Dress Uniform. You can learn more about any component of the uniform by clicking on its image to open a new browser tab that displays detailed product information.