“The worst thing you can do is leave your awards sitting in a drawer or a box somewhere,”.

That was Gregory Fair’s problem. His dress uniform had been sitting in the closet collecting dust since he’d gotten out of the Army.

One day he wondered what his uniform top would look like in a frame. All the other elements of a typical shadow box were right there: awards, badges, rank, unit patches.

After some initial experimenting, it wasn’t long before the Uniform Display Case was born. He takes images of other people’s dress uniforms and creates display cases out of them.

“The most common phrase I hear is that someone should have done this a long time ago,” Fair said.

Uniform Display offers two options: Its original version uses your uniform mounted inside a custom frame. It’s pricey — $750, plus shipping — and the uniform must be cut up in order to fit inside the box. For less than half the cost, Fair prints a high-resolution photograph of a uniform on canvas to use instead.