Camouflage- From Combat to Couture
- May 7, 2018
- 13 min read
“God is camouflage.”, Fashion designer Claude Sabbah’s statement implies that camouflage, both as a concept and a pattern, is omnipotent and omnipresent. How could a simple textile pattern ever be compared with God? If Sabbah’s opinion is correct, how did camouflage achieve such power?”
Objective- To study the gradual change and the evolution of CAMOUFLAGE IN FASHION- MILITARY FASHION and how did the textile pattern known as camouflage come to be imprinted on the public consciousness with such a variety of co-existing meanings.
Abstract- The history of the interconnected relationship between military camouflage and fashion is enduring. This report traces the rise of camouflage textile fashion beginning in the first world war to the beginning of the 21st century. Proceeding chronologically, the relationship between art, war and camouflage is used as the primary lens in discovering how and why fashionable camouflage arose. The transformation of military clothing into popular retail fashion has a long history. In fact, the designs of some of most popular styles, worn for most peaceful purposes, actually originated in clothing intended for warfare. Today we think of khaki as comfortable casual wear but it was born out of military necessity and was among the first type of camouflage (Suciu, 2015).The researcher also studies about how the camouflage clothing which was intended to be invisible became a fashion staple.
Introduction- The camouflage textile pattern itself is just one aspect of camouflage theory, admitting the most visible. The original intention of the pattern was to conceal the humans during war, directly relates to the concept of camouflage theory as practiced in other ways, such as concealing undesirable parts of the body or distorting visual reality. The focus is mainly on the American, and by a certain extension, European experience of fashionable camouflage for two reasons, camouflage began in the United States, and second, the pattern most associated with fashionable camouflage is actually the American military camouflage creation. Art served as camouflage’s primary node of transference between the military and civilians. Other contrasting forces connected to the development of camouflage as a fashion classic include music, marketing, anti-fashion, political activism and feminism. From the 1970’s to the present day, the patterns have repeatedly fallen in and out of fashion creating a cycle that has served to fix it solidly in the fashion pantheon.
Introduction of the Camouflage Prints in Army- In 19th century and early 20th century warfare, most armies wore uniforms consisting of brightly coloured coats and trousers of matching or aesthetically contrasting colours. Various explanations for this practice have been given through the years. Providing a feeling of unity among the troops by seeing their comrades smartly dressed and making an impression on the general public, which was the source of new recruits, are among the more compelling ideas for having an army dressed in parade fashion.
Another more obvious advantage of these "stand out" types of uniforms was simply to be easily distinguished from the enemy in combat situations. The easier it was to identify the confidant, the more readily the commanders could assess conditions and make decisions on the field of battle. Camouflage has inconsistent capabilities to both identify and disguise; whereas the military uses both traits to concurrently hide from the enemy while identifying national affiliation, fashion uses camouflage solely for its ability to make one stand out. The word “camouflage” comes from a French word “Camoufleur” meaning to disguise. It refers to the process of evading visual detection through some combination of blend in colouration, cryptic patterning and blurring of the silhouette. Used by the predators and prey alike, camouflage is all about gaining a survival edge in situations of conflict.
The first camouflage unit was set up by the French in 1915 with pioneering artist using cubist techniques to baffle the enemy by disguising equipment and uniforms with disruptive patterns. It reached to U.S.A in 1917 when they officially entered the war.
There are essentially three types of military camouflage, all of which were utilized in World War I for the purpose of evading detection. The first type is a blending, or assimilating, camouflage that seeks to use colour and pattern to melt into the background by imitating other objects in the environment. A second type of camouflage is called disruptive camouflage, which obliterates a single recognizable shape into several smaller unrecognizable units by using a high-differential colour scheme. A third type of camouflage is coincident camouflage, a method of using both blending and disruptive techniques to merge an object into the background while breaking it into several smaller irregular shapes. This last type of camouflage is the type we most associate with the pattern applied to uniforms – a pattern containing amorphous shapes in colours matching the natural environment (Blenchman)
Almost every country has a distinct camouflage pattern- not only to reflect its own natural terrain but also to differentiate itself from other armies when on the battlefield.
In Gestalt theory, “unit forming” is a blending kind of camouflage, while “unit breaking” is the disruptive type of camouflage. Coincidental camouflage succeeds by breaking a form into units and then merging these units to merge into other objects within the background through blending colouration. While this theory was not codified until 1930, it serves to explain why camouflage was an effective warfare tactic.
Uniforms with standardized, government -issued camouflage pattern did not emerge until World war II. While there is pictorial and material evidence of camouflage applied by paint and fabric to garments during World War I relegated to the elite military personnel such as snippers.
FROM FIELD TO FASHION- It might seem that there is a clear contradiction at the heart of military clothing when co-opted into the world of fashion. While fashion appears to be concerned, above all else with self-expression, freedom and individuality, military dress tends to be about anonymity, the subordination of the self to the group and adherence to often random rules. The military look is created at all levels of fashion from the couture catwalk to the generic fashion retailers and the social out costs and rebels in between. Even as the world war recede into history and conflict has instead become closely associated with the desserts of Afghanistan and the middle east, fashion designers find elements of dress that appeal across the board with their echoes of bravery, courage, authority and the glamour of fear (MacDowell, 2016). The term “camouflage” initially entered into the fashion lexicon as a concept, not as a patterned fabric. The patterned garments mentioned before containing disrupted camouflage were at the time called many things, but not “camouflage.” However, once the idea of deceptive concealment was introduced via World War I, the inherent meaning of the term “camouflage” caught on quickly, and was often applied to the transformative powers of fashion. The bifurcated meaning of camouflage as both a pattern applied to garments and a concept that affects the perception of one’s appearance endures to this day in fashion.
Artists brokered the fluid transmission of camouflage between fashion and military during the early 20th century. While the artists and fashion designers during the first part of the 20th century did not call their work as “camouflage”, the visual principles employed were the same as those for camouflage- like in theory. Futurists artist, Giacomo Balla wrote in his declaration that futurist clothing should be “dynamic, with the dynamic colours and patterns of fabric triangles, cones, spirals, ellipses, circles able to inspire the love of danger, of speed and assault, the hatred of peace and immobility”.
Sonia Delaunay was another artist who exploited disruptive principles of camouflage to achieve a fractured moving image.
She predicted fashion’s use of colourful coincidental camouflage textile patterns which is very similar to the camouflage pattern today. Although these literal translations of military dazzle camouflage patterns into clothing occurred right after the world war 1, the effects of pattern can be felt in 1920. It is in 1930 that disruptive camouflage retreats as an influence in fashion under the guise of surrealism. It was not until the 1960’s that disruptive patterning principles were again applied to clothing.
While during the 1960’s Camouflage patterns were explored more fruitfully by artist rather than fashion designers, the patterns again emerged in public because of the American Vietnam war. During the late 1960-1970, a significant portion of the American young adult male population was dressed in government issued uniforms. The controversial nature of the war also meant that some of these men after returning from war would wear their uniforms for the anti- war protests. This inversion of camouflage into an anti-war symbol was an essential turning point into the transition of the camouflage as military tactic into a device used by civilians to protest. Boasting the possibilities of misusing the camouflage were other counter- culture groups emerging at that time, most notably, The Clash as its typical in the course of fashion history, the fashion system soon took notice of the anti-fashion camouflage trend and co-opted it. Yves Saint Laurent’s 1971 spring/summer collection contained a silk crêpe de chine dress with a marbleized camouflage pattern in rich green tones worn with a silver fox fur shrug. Sent down the runway at the height of the Vietnam War, the dress created a stir, with the juxtaposition of the military-like pattern rendered in silk and paired with luxurious fur.
The Italian designer, Silvano Malta called his 1978 collection “The Camouflage Look”. His collection was just one of the many that showed in Milan that year featuring military themes.
A newspaper, reporting on the growing trend for ladies’ pants in 1971, noted that “manufacturers are trying every kind of fabric imaginable,…a print like the army’s brown and green camouflage pattern has been splattered over jeans.” (Sadd, 1971)
Another reporter noticed that same year that “democracy reached a pinnacle this summer…[as] fashions at Saint Tropez have joined the army this summer, with miles of khaki or camouflage fabrics… …it’s really a proletarian fashion season all the way through.” (Miraval, 1971)
Marbelised dress by Saint Laurenta, 1971
Both of these observations point to the transition of using camouflage patterns borrowed from the military to the creation of new civilian camouflage fabrics inspired by authentic military patterns. During the 1980’s and up on the onset of 21st century, camouflage experienced a radical surge from a novel textile pattern into global postmodern design element. The 1975 trend had “people wearing camouflage print apparel “filling the streets of New York like so many soldiers”– a statement which implies that in the mid-1970s camouflage was used in a more aggressive manner related to the end of the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Indeed, by the 1980s camouflage had begun to assume as one of its many identities a playfulness, especially when rendered in bright colours (Ibid).
Camouflage’s connection with war was finally becoming so watered-down that the maternity fashion designer Joyce Ewing Bradley created maternity tops in camouflage patterns that “get a new life with tasty cool pastels like strawberry, melon, lemon and bluebell.”
One of the fashion stylist even attributed camouflage new found consent to the French who were “playing with khaki and camouflage patterns over a year ago” To them camouflage is camp. They don’t have the horrible feelings attached with respect to war, it was the French conflict in Indochina that initially led to the American intervention in Vietnam. Furthermore, the American “Tigerstripe” camouflage pattern initially used in the conflict by elite military advisors during the early 1960s was directly borrowed from the Republic of Vietnam Army “Tigerstripe” pattern, which in turn had been derived from the French “Lizard” pattern worn by French paratroopers in Indochina since 1953(Newark) .To have French designers playing with the “camp” of camouflage (most of it the American Woodland pattern) during the early 1980s demonstrates the global leap from military to popular culture that camouflage had taken over the past few decades.
Yet although camouflage was beginning to claim a more accessible through its cheery colours, consumers were still turning to traditional coloration schemes when they were looking to add a hint of strength to their look. In 1981 Tommy Hilfiger, called his year-old clothing line “20th Century Survival” and issued looks as disparate as Victoriana, hunting plaids and camouflage(Schiro, 1981).
Robert Molnar, in 1980’s made a collection of putting the prints on luxurious textiles like chiffon and velvet in several bright colours (image alongside) (1984) (patterns printed on silk) Although his collection was a huge hit and received lot of appreciation he was disappointed as his customers wore it for the stylised tropical print. In fact, during this time the camouflage pattern had lost its ability to shock. It was merely just one of the patterns like any floral or geometrical which designers used to create certain mood or merely just for profits.
Stephen Sprouse’s collection 1987 collection brought back the pattern into popular culture. It was high profile due to the usage of his friend Andy Warhol’s camouflage prints in 1986, the year Warhol died .
Andy warhol's screen prints, 1986
Warhol began over the American woodland camouflage and then silk-screening it onto canvas in various scales and colourways. Warhol’s camouflage series touched upon the contradictory aspects of camouflage through themes revolving around death and celebrity.
The many fluctuating meaning of camouflage reflected in both ideologies of postmodernism and American pop culture. Camouflage was not merely a pretty pattern or symbol of war but it was anything that you wanted it to be. Although the French were the first to initiate camouflage as a central component to their military strategy, it is at its core an American perfection. By the completion of the 1980s, the military roots of camouflage had been successfully grafted into the ever-changing cultural system called fashion.
As the 20th century was drawing close, camouflage had completed its metamorphosis into culturally accepted, recognisable and desirable design element. In 1990, American military introduced new camouflage pattern popularly know as chocolate chip pattern (Six Colour Dessert Pattern)
Although the American army discarded it as it didn’t look military enough. Its publicized introduction, combined with the real-time video-game sense of war spawned yet another cycle of camouflage uptake, with teenagers everywhere suddenly wearing camouflage pants. (Castro, 1991). More importantly it also imbibed the idea in youths that prints need not have to be “typical” American woodland style pattern.
Gradually it was not just different countries creating different patterns but companies who were exploiting camouflage for branding purpose. The outpour of new custom-made camouflage patterns by the sporting companies like Real Tree, Mossy Oak and Trebark marked the emergence of camouflage as a unique marketing tool that exploited its contradictory ability to both disguise and identify.
Maharishi, a British streetwear company turned camouflage as a marketing tool and a way to increase urban credibility. Hardy Blenchman, the founder started to demilitarise through the issuance of custom patterns. The application of camouflage to streetwear reveals a capacity for camouflage to make known the tribal and brand loyalties along with portraying the sense of authenticity.
While the punks of the 1970’s and 1980’s wore camouflage occasionally, it was really the onset of hip- hop and rap movement that made camouflage as a necessary element of urban life. In 1987, Public Enemy displayed a militarized style at their concerts wearing woodland camouflage uniforms in an official black, grey and white “urban” colouration scheme. Their use of the American Woodland pattern in an adulterated colourway invoked the urban environment of architecture, concrete and streets sharpened their message of the street as a battlefield
Following on their footsteps rappers such as Gang Starr, Wu- Tang Clan and Eminem began wearing camouflage expressing like mindedness with each other for emphasizing them living a street soldier lifestyle they rapped about. By the turn of 21st century camouflage had gone mainstream even more than the previous decades. There was an explosion of camouflage-patterned fashion, from cheap garments to couture gowns by John Galliano for Dior(image below). By 2001 the Worth Global Style Network (WGSN), was publishing a slew of articles on the emergence of camouflage as the biggest trend of the year, going so far as to call the American Woodland pattern as the “generic” version of the print. Designers like, Marc Jacobs, Burberry, Rei Kawakubo, Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood all issued camouflage-patterned designs, ranging from the American Woodland pattern to obscure vintage military patterns that never made it out of the testing phase. A lot of designers received media attention for their prints usage but it was Galliano’s brash yet luxurious camouflage garments that demonstrated the heights to which camouflage had risen in fashion.
“The terrorist attack on 11september 2001 led to the sudden disappearance of camouflage fashion. With a new American war in Afghanistan, the controversial question of whether a textile pattern meant for war was appropriate as fashion for
women and children came to the forefront. Camouflage was no longer “sexily subversive,” but an all too real indication of war. Protestors in New York chose to wear camouflage in an iconic way with buttons or lettering indicating “peace “and “love”. Camouflage meant absolutely nothing, anything and everything by this time. Its brief disappearance from fashion after September 11, 2001 was a mere hiccup in the spread of camouflage as the “paisley of the Iraq War era.” (Thurman, 2003) Concurrent with the opening of the American war in Iraq in 2003, camouflage attained a generic ubiquity as it was applied to everything from toys to toilet paper.
Different versions of camouflage can be seen in various colours and shapes executed by so many brands, streetwear brands like Bape, Supreme, Carhatt and Stone island have their own recognisable prints.
Clothes by popular streetwear brand, Supreme
While fashion embraces camouflage mainly through its use as a textile pattern, it is camouflage – the activity – which fundamentally aligns with fashion. More than just a textile pattern, camouflage is a conceptual and physical device through which identities are shifted, altered, killed or born. Just as the camouflage textile pattern has no one single meaning, the process of identification through fashion/camouflage is also never static.
Fashioning/camouflaging the self is always a process of adaptation and becoming. As the architect Neil states that camouflage constitutes a mode of symbolization and a form of connectivity and operates as a form of our environment. We symbolically absorb, manipulate and put across as our self-expression. As our world changes so do the fashion.
Autumn collection of 2013 by G star, Rebecca Minkoff, Michael Kors and Baum respectively
“Is God camouflage? More than just a malleable textile pattern used in fashion, camouflage is an interactive process of becoming one with the world, while remaining distinct from it. It is a process of losing our identity, while reaffirming it. Fashion, as a system that simultaneously enforces conformity while conferring a unique identity, embraces camouflage as a device that, much like God, can create and destroy”
References
Castro, J., 1991. All Wired and Vary, s.l.: Time.
Christian, S., 2016. Epic history of military style, s.l.: s.n.
Golbold, T., n.d. Military Style Invades Fashion, London: Phaidon.
Miraval, M. d., 1971. Ingridients of Style , s.l.: Christian Science Monitor.
Sadd, J. I., 1971. Prediction- Another big Years for Pants, s.l.: Chicago Tribune.
Schiro, A.-. M., 1981. A Survivor's Design, s.l.: New York times.
Suciu, P., 2015. The evolution of U.S military camouflage: From basic green and khaki to digital patterns and beyond, U.S.A: Fox News.
Thurman, R., 2003. "Camouflage- Its an everywhere fashion statement", s.l.: s.n.
Scaturro, Sarah, 2011. From Combat to Couture- Camouflage in fashion. Master degree. New York: Metropolitan museum of art.
Rall, D., 2014. Fashion and War in Popular Culture. 1st ed. United Kingdom: Intellect.
Topor, Lauren, 2017. War and Fashion: Political views and How Military Styles influence Fashion. Masters in Science. Michigan: Eastern Michigan University.
ACCLAIM. 2017. Off the Cuff: A brief history of Camo. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.acclaimmag.com/style/off-the-cuff-a-brief-history-of-camo/. [Accessed 24 September 2017].
Esquire. 2017. The Epic History of Military Style. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.esquire.com/style/a41725/the-epic-history-of-military-style/. [Accessed 24 September 2017].
Washington Post. 2017. Camouflage, fashion statement and lifesaver, gets a makeover from the Army - The Washington Post. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/camouflage-fashion-statement-and-lifesaver-gets-a-makeover-from-the-army/2012/02/10/gIQAmTeQ1R_story.html?utm_term=.81ccd1a9f684. [Accessed 24 September 2017].
Hunter chic: No hiding fashion world's love of camouflage. 2017. Hunter chic: No hiding fashion world's love of camouflage. [ONLINE] Available at: http://archive.jsonline.com/business/hunter-chic-no-hiding-fashion-worlds-love-of-camouflage-b99132991z1-230430261.html/. [Accessed 24 September 2017].
Complex. 2017. 1995, Cannaflage, maharishi - The Complex Guide to Camo | Complex. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.complex.com/style/2011/09/the-complex-guide-to-camo/1995-cannaflage-maharishi. [Accessed 24 September 2017].
LoveToKnow. 2017. Camouflage Cloth. [ONLINE] Available at: http://fashion-history.lovetoknow.com/fabrics-fibers/camouflage-cloth. [Accessed 24 September 2017]
Comments