Camouflage: A Love Story

An appreciation of disruptive pattern material by a girl who hates war. Originally published in WAH! fanzine, 2007

“Josephine, did you forget to put your trousers on again?” is a question I’m often asked, usually followed up with a round of Muttley-style chortling. It’s hilarious I tells ya. Not because I go around town wearing miniscule lycra batty-riders or anything like that. No, I am often asked that because my favourite garment of the two-legged variety is actually invisible, albeit in the dark jungles of Vietnam rather than the urban jungles of Tottenham. It’s camouflage and I think I have a fetish.

I don’t know when exactly I fell in love with camo or how I came to cultivate such a passion for disruptive patterned material. All I know is that I awoke one morning after a night of drunken debauchery and, in my hung-over reverie, mistook my room with its bespoke camo curtains and chairs for an army camp. That one day I left the house and when I checked my reflection in the hairdresser’s window on the corner, I looked like I was going to war.

And yet I’m totally anti-war. People never get that. My sister’s fiancé, proudly serving in the British Army, doesn’t get it. Maybe the reason that I’ve been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation thus far is that I don’t get it myself. The paradox of loving camouflage but hating war and violence. Is it even a paradox? I jumped on the tube and headed south of the river to London’s Imperial War Museum, home to an exhibition on camouflage, to help me think it through.

Although I grimaced at the thought of what destruction the tanks and cannons in the museum foyer had achieved, navigating around the maze of camouflage archives and artefacts showed me that, actually, I could identify with the techniques employed by the military. For example, the most common technique is concealment: hiding an object or changing its colour, texture or pattern so that it matches its background. I use camo in much the same way. Granted, I may not blend into the background of any concrete jungle, but in a city where no-one is ever truly concealed (London topping the list of world cities for the highest ratio of CCTV cameras per head), my camo at least sends out the message that I want to be hidden. I want to be left alone.

Deception is another technique, referring to the use of dummies and decoys to fool the enemy into making false assessments of your position or strength. People are always making false assessments on me based on my clothing and appearance. I’m casual each and every day, bar weddings, funerals and meetings with the board (reluctantly). Don’t expect me to turn up at your birthday shubs if no trainers are allowed. And people are quick to judge. So I’m often underestimated, dismissed as though I were some street rat off road. But I love it, that classic moment when you open your mouth and the ignorami are taken totally aback. No, I’m not dumb. No, I won’t take your shit. And yes, I will see you in court if you take the piss out of me, you schmuk.

Then there’s distortion employing dazzle camouflage, a complex pattern made of geometric shapes used to cover ships in the First World War. Yeah, they’d stick out like a sore thumb against the blue backdrop of the English Channel, but that wasn't the point. Its purpose was confusion; the pattern actually broke up the shape of the ship and made it hard for the enemy to detect its size, speed and heading. I can get with that kind of camo too. I have at least two geometric-patterned tops that I wear to distort the shape of my bulging tummy after one too many kebabs.

Despite all this, however, the exhibition also made me realize that identifying with camo in those military contexts doesn’t mean I’m down with war. In fact, it was as a means of protest against the Vietnam war in the 1960s that civilian camo-wearing really took off, a move that was seen as shocking in its day. It was used to simultaneously conceal the identities of and attract attention to the protestors and their cause, but the overall effect was that a symbol of the establishment was subverted. And this subversion of camouflage just grew and grew. From Andy Warhol to Futura 2000; from Funkadelic through to The Clash, Black Uhuru, Public Enemy (and, er...Destiny's Child); from Maharishi to John Galliano, camouflage has been utilised by a thousand and one artists in all creative spheres up until the present day to represent subversion, rebellion and revolution.

But also peace. Earth.The spiritual and organic. Because the fact is that the military copied all that shit from Mother Nature. Concealment? Check out the chameleon or the leaf frog. Butterflies and moths are amongst nature's masters of disguise and the zebra is the don of the dazzle. Camouflage has been hijacked by the military in much the same way that the swastika, an ancient symbol of good luck and success, was hijacked by the Nazis. Hardy Blechman, founder of Maharishi and arguably fashion's biggest camoufleur, believes that the colour combination used in camouflage "taps into every human's subconscious love of nature".

Not everyone feels the same though. Don’t try rocking up to Barbados in camo because it’ll be confiscated quicker than you can say ‘flying fish and cou-cou’. Camouflage remains strictly for military personnel there. Bunch of killjoys.

But actually, you know what? I might be alright with that. After all, life is just one long battle and I soldier it out on a daily basis. I just don’t destroy or kill. I dazzle.