The year 2022 has brought war to Europe in the form of a major military offensive in Ukraine, which the Russian ruler cynically and euphemistically dubbed a "special operation". Since February of last year, we have been inundated with a flood of images from the Eastern European country.
Columns of tanks and troop movements. Footage of nighttime attacks. Bright rocket fire sets the sky aglow over cities that look so similar to our own . People on the run, bombed columns of cars. Men and women in camouflage uniforms and the president of a European country, who, in a military green T-shirt, is close to the people and soldiers, repeating slogans of perseverance and addressing a world public that is staring spellbound, but soon dulled, at the television screen with urgent requests for arms deliveries .
At the same time, on the catwalks of the world, in the cafes, clubs and streets of the big cities, all kinds of military-style items - parkas, balaclavas, vests and good old camouflage - are experiencing a renaissance. Some people are excitedly asking whether this is possible, whether it is even allowed to be worn these days in view of the atrocities of war . The answer is not easy. It is a search for clues.
First of all, military items have always found their way into fashion. Suit cuts, double-breasted jackets, shoulder straps (epaulettes, a wonderful word) and many other things have their origins in uniforms. Much of it is simply practical. Some of it has probably passed into civilian life out of a desire to look dashing . Balaclavas and parkas are great and practical items of clothing. But what about camouflage?
Let's stress the obvious: in a world in which almost every creature has to be on guard against attacks from other beings almost constantly, evolution has given a lot of importance to the ability to protect oneself from the gaze of predators and/ or to send misleading signals. Regardless of whether you are a hunter or the hunted, only those who are as well adapted as possible to a hostile environment have clear advantages.
“For every tiger that you see, five see you.”
saying, Madhya Pradesh, India
Hunting humans understood this early on. The apex predator , endowed by nature with little camouflage but a lot of endurance , had to defend itself against assert one's visibility. Hunters in earlier cultures already used various aids. Nomadic peoples in the prairies of North America wrapped themselves in furs when hunting in order to get closer to the skittish bison. Hunters from other cultures hid under blankets in the colors of the surroundings , smeared themselves with earth or painted themselves. Becoming one with the surroundings was and is an advantage when stalking . However - as nature teaches us - it is not primarily about adapting when at rest, but about remaining inconspicuous when moving.
Interestingly, the logic of camouflage was forgotten for many centuries, at least in a military context. Until the beginning of the last century, many of the uniforms of Western armed forces resembled colorful carnival costumes. On the battlefields, people still met each other in ranks and colors until the end of the 19th century . Commanders had drums rolled and announced the attacks of their units with musical fanfare. Soldiers ran towards each other, visible from afar. English troops wore bright red jackets, French fought in blue, Austrians in white, while Russians also wore blue and dark green uniforms. The main function of these uniforms was to visually distinguish oneself from the enemy and to recognize one's comrades in the chaos of battle. They were identity-forming costumes. Like football jerseys. Camouflage or even attacking the enemy from behind was long considered cowardly or even underhanded.
In his standard work “On War”, Carl von Clausewitz coined the term “theater of war” in 1836 to describe the place of military conflict. Wars at that time had something highly performative, something theatrical about them. But even today the phrase “theater of operations” is used euphemistically.
“Invisibility in everything is the thing we aim at in modern war”
Solomon J. Solomon (1860-1927), British artist and camouflager, 1916
Strangely enough, it was precisely the modern mechanization of war that brought camouflage to the battlefields at the beginning of the last century . The trench and positional warfare of the First World War quickly lost all theatrical appeal. The slaughter of those buried dragged on for grueling months and years despite – or perhaps because of – the accelerated war machine . New, more precise weapons made it possible to kill from a distance. Snipers could detect even the smallest movement of the enemy from hundreds of meters away. Tanks roared over opponents. Aircraft and the use of photography enabled unprecedented reconnaissance of the enemy's movements and positions. It was important to keep a low profile. If you were visible, you were trapped. No general wanted to wear out his men with a glowing red coat. Simple shades of gray, brown and green determined the look of the first global war. Simple, industrially manufactured materials for the industrial slaughter of ordinary people.
Although the American artist and naturalist Abbott Henderson Thayer wrote a series of treatises on camouflage in the animal kingdom around the turn of the century and is said to have offered his findings to both the American and British military for further development, it was the French who were the first country to recognise the new need for hide-and-seek and to act accordingly. As early as 1915, the leadership of the French army appointed a unit specifically to deal with the camouflage of heavy equipment and weapons. The artist Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola headed the "Section de Camouflage". Here , painters, stage designers and sculptors worked together, in top secret and successfully, on various projects. Within a very short time, every nation involved in the war had its own camouflage departments which, in the absence of better production options, dyed fabrics by hand and painted heavy equipment . Messenger pigeons were dipped in black paint to make them look like crows. The British experimented with jagged patterns of disruption – the so-called dazzle design – to camouflage the shape and size of their warships. Huge canvases were designed to show approaching ground troops. Hollow dummies were constructed to serve as reconnaissance stations and large nets were covered with fabric to hide heavy artillery. Human -like dummies were laid out to simulate injured people and could be moved using rope pulls . They were used to lure the enemy out of the trenches, right into the booby trap, right into the sights of the snipers. They were used to deceive, hide and camouflage. Camouflage was not only a means of defence, but also a means of attack. ( Carsten Sobek's text: The Art of Camouflage in The Heritage Post No. 9 offers an excellent, if brief, insight into this early period of camouflage.)
During the First World War, monochrome fabrics still had to be decorated with patterns by hand, but the development of new weaving processes made it possible to manufacture long lengths of fabric industrially . In 1929, Italian artists developed a camouflage fabric that was to become one of the most successful in history. The camouflage, known as Telo Mimetico, was worn without interruption by the Italian army until 1990. A camouflage bestseller, so to speak.
Camouflage fabrics became the norm in the design of combat uniforms from the Second World War onwards. 107 nations now use camouflage patterns to dress their troops. It goes without saying that internationally successful classics have emerged from this . The US Woodland, for example, or the British DPM (Disruptive Pattern Material). DPM has been worn so much in various variations all over the world since its creation in the 1960s that a very strange situation arose in 1991. During preparations for the Kuwait War, a new camouflage pattern had to be created for the British troops , as it turned out that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi soldiers were wearing British DPM.
Even today, military laboratories are experimenting with all kinds of high-tech materials. Modern reconnaissance technologies are presenting the successors to camouflage with immense challenges. Classic camouflage can do little against computer-aided thermal imaging reconnaissance and other technologies. Smart colors are being used and retro-reflective materials are being tested that use tiny screens to adapt the camouflaged person to their surroundings.
Given this global success story, it is not surprising that various artists and all kinds of subcultures soon adopted the principles of camouflage: the first camouflages were, after all, artists, and war was a recurring central theme in art. The British surrealist painter Roland Penrose, who worked on camouflage issues on behalf of his government, made early and repeated connections between cubist painting and the art of camouflage. Picasso is said to have even been carried away by the idea that the cubists had invented camouflage .
“Andy Warhol, silver screen, can’t tell them apart at all.”
David Bowie. Andy Warhol, RCA, 1971
After the Second World War, artists such as Jacquet, Bo etti, Bourdin and Veruschka played with the idea of camouflage . Annie Leibovitz repeatedly photographed Keith Haring and other contemporaries in "camouflage" and Warhol also discovered the theme for himself. The Pop Art god created portraits and paintings with DPM and designed his own camouflages in blue and pink, which were later taken up by the fashion scene . Artists played with the dissolution of the individual against the backdrop of an increasingly fragmented world. Graffiti finally conquered the urban world and began to shape the material world in such a way that objects were often barely perceptible as themselves .
In the sixties, hippies wore the brightly painted camouflage uniforms of their compatriots fighting in Vietnam. “Camo” became a gesture of resistance against the despised bourgeois establishment. The fact that this started the trend of upcycling was probably irrelevant. They brought the look to the streets. Soon everyone was wearing camouflage: construction workers, musicians, sprayers, punks, skaters and skins. Haute couture was also quickly on the scene and dragged the street trend onto the catwalks. Paul Smith, Marharishi, Dior, Miyake, Lagerfeld and Vuitton are constantly playing with the material. At the turn of the millennium, Galliano postulated that camouflage was “the new leopard”. Designers use existing DPMs , develop them further or even invent their own. Where fashion goes, stars and starlets follow. Camouflage became mainstream. A lifestyle decision that military roots were almost forgotten.
A not insignificant part of the camouflage fabrics produced worldwide no longer serve a military purpose. Like epaulettes and double-breasted jackets, camo has become something of its own . Nevertheless, the material remains closely associated with war in the minds of many observers . This goes so far that some countries prohibit the wearing of camouflage fabrics. The Bahamas, for example , Ghana, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and South Africa. ( So inform yourself before you set off on your summer vacation before you suddenly find yourself without your beloved Carhartt camo shorts.)
“Camouflage has moved beyond its military heritage but in an unexpected context can still for the moment be subversive or simply make you smile. Camo has become a classic.”
Richard James, British men's tailor, 2002
We can see how much opinions on camouflage are divided in times of wars near Europe. The question of whether one can still wear camouflage when there is a war is certainly not entirely unjustified from a certain perspective. But it seems that the omnipresence of war images in the media is less of a deterrent than an inspiration. Fashion blogs and magazines give style-conscious women tips on how to combine the (once again) hot trend in 2023. And on the catwalks of the world, designers are sending their thin male models in oversized DPM gear in front of the audience, while camo is simultaneously making its way into the fitness and even yoga scene.
Nevertheless, we cannot forget that our fashion statements often touch on the traumas of others. It cannot be denied that African child soldiers of prepubescent age are trained to kill in camouflage, while Martha, who is the same age , plays with Otto in similar patterns on the inner-city playground in Berlin Mitte. But pointing a moral finger at the stuff and being outraged at the wearing of DPM is just as absurd. We cannot deny that all sorts of politically confused weirdos have a weakness for the camouflage material, and we cannot forget that artistic avant-gardes love it too.
Many of us, however, will not even think about such things and will reach for camouflage material less out of solidarity or resistance , but perhaps more out of an unconscious feeling that even after many millennia of evolution, visibility is still a trap.
Author • Mark Horyna
Photo • David Clode, Unsplash
Published in Heritage Post No. 45