Not long after September 11, 2001, I saw a Middle Eastern businessman walking through Penn Station wearing a tunic and turban. Fellow commuters gave him a wide berth; policemen, shaking their heads, eyed him suspiciously.The man’s arms were outstretched in a wide open gesture that communicated: “I have nothing to hide.” In each hand, one of which held a briefcase, he waved a small American flag. Another much larger American flag was wrapped around his body: a clashing of pattern and color, it looked less like the stars-andstripes than a badly designed, ill-fitting, knee-length dress.

The gentleman at Penn Station was wearing propaganda as armor. His defamation of Old Glory, not to mention the ridiculousness of his outfit, was trumped by his overwhelming, if not desperate, patriotism. He was displaying the red, white, and blue – as President Bush (who wears a flag pin on his lapel) has suggested we do – as a symbolic act that showed not only troop support but also nationalism and solidarity.

Not surprisingly, flags play a central role in “Wearing Propaganda,” a fascinating exhibition of spectacular to mediocre textiles and clothing at the Bard Graduate Center. It is filled with patriotic slogans and images of weapons, soldiers, bowing children, landmarks, military leaders, and, of course, flags. Like the flag-wearing man at Penn Station, it strikes chords of loyalty and nationalism, as well as those of tragicomedy, absurdity, patriotic desperation, and embarrassingly bad taste.

“Wearing Propaganda” comprises some 130 Japanese, American, and British men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing and accessories (kimonos, scarves, belts, ties, handbags, blouses, and dresses), as well as tablecloths, blankets, and fabric, from 1931 to 1945. Supplemented by photographs, toys, magazines, fans, and posters, the groundbreaking scholarly exhibition examines and compares patriotic civilian fashion trends during wartime.

The show is filled with previously unknown and undocumented textiles, especially those from Japan – which dominate the show not only in number but also aesthetically. Part of the difference in quality has to do with differences in tradition. By the 1930s, the Japanese already had a long history of using their clothing as illustrative canvases. Because of this, their garments – even when they display tanks, battleships, and fighter planes – integrate image, pattern, and shape much more naturally and successfully than do those from America and Britain. In the latter, slogans, icons, and flags, or illustrative vignettes and cartoons, often feel as if they had been pasted onto the fabric.

Another difference is who wore these garments. Most textiles in the show from Britain and America (scarves, dresses, and blouses) were worn by women as everyday wear. Mildly intriguing but not memorable, are works such as “Scarf ‘Fighting Words'” (1940-41) by Echo Scarves, America, on which is written numerous, attributed wartime slogans: “Damn the Torpedoes! Go Ahead!” and “I have not yet begun to fight” and the British “Woman’s Scarf With Churchill Images and Quotes” (1940s). By contrast, the best textiles in the exhibition are the lavish and elaborate, traditional Japanese garments (specifically linings), most of which, because they depict militaristic, or “male” images, were worn only by men and boys at home or on special occasions.

In the understated blue, white, and gray “Man’s nagauban [a long underkimono] ‘Night Landing'” (1937-41), a vibrating checkerboard pattern alternates between two rectangles – one of dark sky and silver clouds and one of troops, surf, and landing craft. In “Woman’s Summer Kimono, ‘Nazi and Japanese Flags'” (c. 1940), a shimmering transparent, red-andwhite striped garment, a pattern of floating rectangles holds the swastika and the rising sun, and the buoyant flags feel veiled or sandwiched within the layers of silk gauze.

And nothing in the show from Britain or America can equal the beautiful, calligraphic “Remnant of Haori [a short outer jacket worn over kimono] Lining Fabric” (early 1930s) – a repeating pattern, in browns, of horse, rider, flag, waving lines, and calligraphy.

The heavily illustrated catalog for the exhibition (Yale University Press) is important and visually arresting. It is a cross-cultural, historical, and sociological study not just of propaganda and censorship in the fields of textiles and fashion (or “style” in the fullest sense of the word) but also in those of graphic design, advertising, and publishing.

It illumines differences and similarities between wartime Japan, Britain, and America in the realms of governmental control and/or influence of civilian “style,” as well as the civilians’ respective reactions to the differing and changing levels of control, freedom, and influence regarding fashion. And it puts the textiles in the context of the nation’s differing notions of beauty and extravagance, racism, rationing, functionalism, comfort, tradition, patriotism, sacrifice, morale, and “making do,” and it unravels the various symbols and metaphors used in the designs.

Having looked through the catalog prior to seeing the exhibition, though, I found the show a bit of a letdown. “Wearing Propaganda,” though always interesting, is more compact (and, therefore, less successful in conveying the fullness of its themes) than the catalog, which, comparatively speaking, explores its subject’s full breadth.

The show is informative and engaging, and it includes many surprising and/or beautiful textiles.Yet it feels at times as if the works had been chosen for historical, sociological, or comparative rather than artistic worth. Divided into several small sections, or themes (such as modernity, empire, militarism, patriotism, sacrifice, text, and victory), “Wearing Propaganda” is wildly uneven in terms of quality and has the atmosphere of a show primarily concerned with filling out its themes rather than displaying works of art. Despite the show’s shortcomings, however, its curator, Jacqueline Atkins (and the Bard Graduate Center, where Ms. Atkins is a Ph.D. candidate), should be highly commended – for she has broken fertile, unexplored ground.

Until February 5 (18 W. 86th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, 212-501-3023).