Fashion: Military complex
We fashion watchers like to attach larger meaning to emerging trends, putting their popularity into some socio-cultural context. When it comes to camouflage, as well as this season’s super-strong military influence in womenswear, are real-life events such as the war in Iraq and other world conflicts driving designers to push these looks out onto the runways and into stores?
Sandra Michaels Adams, who teaches clothing history and the role of dress in society at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, says “the element of war is part of the zeitgeist,” and likely has some effect on what real people wear on the streets.
Camouflage has “clearly become part of the 20th and 21st century fashion vocabulary,” she says. “We selectively and collectively use these elements in new ways. They go out of the closet; they go back in.”
‘Serpent eats its own tail’
While she isn’t seeing her trend-setting fashion design students decked out in camouflage, she is spotting a flip side of the same trend. “I do see them wearing military-style jackets — olive drab, khaki. We’re seeing a return to these colors.
“Of course, yes, there is a war, and in our collective conscience and unconscious is this worry about war,” says Adams, who also teaches 20th century fashion at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But also in play, she says, is the notion that “the serpent eats its own tail and redigests itself over and over again” in fashion. Just as we’re seeing camo prints in stores, we’re simultaneously seeing an ’80s and ’90s revival in fashion, decades when camouflage was strong.
But Adams says today’s fad-driven camo phase is much different than the baby boom generation’s. Among trendy young folks, “I’m not hearing or seeing sufficient war protest to say this is against the war,” she says. “It’s not like the ’60s when we wore military clothes as a protest statement. We went to the Army-Navy stores and bought it because it was cheap. We also did it as a way of thumbing our noses at the ‘establishment.’ We were going to take on these symbols and use them as an expression of our pacifism.”
Says Roy Behrens, author of False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (Bobolink Books, $22.95): “In fashion, one of the things that is really predominant is people have learned to be fashionable by wearing things out of context. You can’t really nail it down. Sometimes it’s pro-war, sometimes it’s anti-war, and sometimes it’s just about the pattern.”
Behrens hosted a conference in April on camouflage’s intersection with art, science and pop culture. Artists, historians, psychologists and others from the U.K., Australia, Spain and the United States gathered to discuss camo’s worldwide influence. “It’s really been going on for a long time,” Behrens says, “but it’s built up slowly and there seems to be a crescendo right now. I think it’s really quite interesting in its ambiguity because it doesn’t stand for one single symbol.”
This fall, camo is “a huge trend for kids,” says Laura McDowell, fashion spokeswoman for T.J. Maxx. “Boys love the baggy look. What’s different this year is that we’re seeing it in things other than pants and shorts. It’s in bookbags, backpacks and workout wear. [Manufacturers] made camouflage sweet, and the kids love it. They just think of it as a great print.” Younger girls are wearing camo Ts with pink and blue backgrounds, and McDowell says that older women often shop T.J. Maxx’s junior department for these trendy looks.
But she dismisses the notion that kids are wearing camouflage because of overseas conflicts. “Honestly,” she says, “it’s been in fashion when we weren’t at war. I was seeing military 10 years ago.”
Old Navy this fall showed women’s camo totes in colors ranging from black to pink to navy. “It definitely shows the camo print from a fashion perspective vs. a basic,” says spokeswoman Andrea Lui.
Retailers like Army Navy Sales at 3100 N. Lincoln find camouflage worn as a style statement “has its peaks and valleys,” says manager Robert Finstein. “On the fashion side, it’s probably mostly the 15-to-25 [year old] group. We sell more trousers in camouflage than anything. The traditional color is most popular, but we also sell the ‘urban,’ which are black and white.”
Camouflage at upscale prices
Camo has gone chic, creeping into boutiques such as Jake, with locations on the Gold Coast and in Lakeview. The store sells $285 Paris-based Notify camo jeans for men and women. “It’s traditional camo — greens and browns — but has a really cool updated feel,” says co-owner Jim Wetzel about the straight-leg jeans with a waxen sheen. “You can’t tell they’re camo until you’re right up on them, and then you can see all the colors.”
Wetzel believes upscale designers are going beyond fashion with these looks, mentioning Israeli-born Nili Lotan who featured camo prints for spring and who’s showing silk chemises with machine gun and oil rig prints for spring 2007. “It’s definitely hitting a different level of design,” he says. “I think designers are feeling like they can really make their feelings known.”
But just like other trends, camo’s staying power depends on its relatability to consumers.
“The variety of American fashion gives us all these possibilities,” Adams says. “If it means something to them, they’ll wear it.”
mjenkins@suntimes.com
