Here’s a counterintuitive fashion trend: Want to stand out? Try camouflage.
Normally reserved for battlefields, hiding in duck blinds, or hipster irony, camo is now being spotted everywhere.
“It’s impossible not to notice it,” says Redbook fashion director Audrey Slater. “It’s truly a runaway trend.”
Make that a runway trend: designers Michael Kors, Christopher Kane and Gryphon showed camouflage-inspired prints in a rainbow of colors and textures on the fall runways, and influential label Carven showed flirty, colorful camo dresses for spring.
Celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon, Naya Rivera, Eva Longoria and Rihanna have all shown up covered in camo.
“Camouflage, a perennial trend, is in again,” says Ariele Elia, the co-curator of the “Trend-ology” exhibit at the Fashion Institute of Technology Museum.
Camo, Elia says, is one of those fashion staples — like leopard prints or tartan — that “we’ll see time and time again.”
That “time” is now. According to the trendcasting firm WGSN, use of camouflage is up 73% for the fall/winter 2013 season. But just because all the cool kids are doing it doesn’t mean you can just put down that machine gun and pull on that miniskirt.
To look chic — i.e., not be mistaken for a soldier or hunter — wear camo with something dressier, fashion mavens say.
“It’s a tougher, more rugged look, and really easy to pull off if you pair it with something more tailored and polished, almost preppie,” Slater says. For example, wearing camo jeans with a T-shirt can make you look like you’re “going to play paintball,” but a cable-knit sweater adds unexpected finesse.
“I take my Army jacket over dresses and jeans alike,” adds Joyann King, digital director at Harper’s Bazaar. “It adds instant edge to any look.”
There’s plenty of camo available on the high street, but with a twist: Topshop features a shiny jacquard miniskirt for $76 in maroon, navy and yellow — as well as $90 jogging pants in the more traditional coloring. Textile Elizabeth and James — Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s fashion label — offers a pair of snug camo jeans for $228. (If you’re really serious about fading into the background while standing out, try the company’s matching camo sweatshirt, $145.) J. Crew offers an array of camo, including a “boyfriend fatigue jacket” for $178, a silk scarf, and even a camo snowsuit for babies.
Since it is, after all, a trend, Slater doesn’t recommend you drop a lot of cash to stay current — a pair of jeans will have you stomping the streets in style, but hold back on the $1,425 electric blue camo Michael Kors dress that Witherspoon and Sigourney Weaver wore to recent bashes.
The best thing about this mottled-print trend is you can be fashionable on the cheap and get your high-fashion military surplus at an Army Navy store or hunting outfitter.
“Camouflage is a big deal, especially in a store like ours,” says Jim Korn, manager at Kaufman’s Army & Navy on W. 42nd St., the oldest surplus store in the city. “Often, civilians are not exposed to military patterns, and they really like them. ... They’re neat, they’re cool, they’re not expensive, they’re fun.”
You can thank women in the military for aiding this trend. Because of the swelling ranks on the distaff side of our armed services, there are plenty of authentic Army-surplus outfits in smaller women’s sizes.
Korn says Kaufman’s most popular item for women is a woodland camo pattern battle dress uniform shirt. At $20, it’s a steal — after all, it’s real. The camo trend may recede into the fashion background after a season or two, but it won’t go far.
“In some ways camo could be consider a classic print — especially for weekend wear,” says King. “A camo Army jacket will never go out of style.”
smcclear@nydailynews.com
THE COMING OF CAMO
The era of modern camouflage began with the trench and aerial warfare of World War I.
The French are always fashion-forward, but the country wasn’t thinking style when it started using camo — it simply realized that formal white gloves and red pants were not helping soldiers on the battlefield.
The U.S. Army developed its own camouflage with an eye toward evolution — basing its designs on naturalist Abbott Thayer’s 1909 book “Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom.”
Top camouflage stylists included soldiers Grant Wood, who later painted “American Gothic,” and Bill Blass, who became an influential fashion designer after his World War II stint.
The camouflage that is most familiar to Americans — a mix of green, brown, tan and black — is called U.S. Woodland. Vietnam soldiers’ jungle camo was referred to as “Tigerstripe,” and Desert Storm-era uniforms were called “Chocolate Chip” — the small chunks are meant to resemble gravel.
A decade ago, the Pentagon spent $5 billion to create a Universal Camouflage Pattern for use in any terrain. But it failed to anticipate the topography of Afghanistan, so the bureaucrats remain at the drawing board.
S.McC.
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