One day you may be walking down the street and notice something you might consider a bit strange. The person, maybe even the group of people you just passed were wearing camouflage clothing. But why? They didn’t appear to be professional military personnel and it isn’t the right time of year for hunting, so why would a person be out and about wearing mottled patterns of green, tan, brown, leaves and bark? It is due to the fact that camouflage clothing is not just for utilitarian use any more and it is, as a matter of fact, quite fashionable. Thousands of variations of the pattern exists and has been reproduced in everything from camouflage bedding to camo truck accessories.
In fact, wearing camouflage as a fashion statement has been around for quite some time and has been an influence on the fashion world since shortly after the end of the First World War. Camouflage the word has it’s roots in an old French word that means “to blind or veil”, which makes perfect sense as that is exactly what camouflage, whether it be man made or otherwise, is used for. Speaking of the French, it was during the Napoleonic War where camo was first adopted by two skirmishing units of the British army in the form of a rifle green jacket. During the Second World War, it was much more widely adopted to hide and protect soldiers from new advances in aerial observation and attack, leading all warring nations to camouflage everything they could.
Ironically, it is now used in the fashion industry to help somebody stand out. Some individuals even go so far as to turn the whole concept on it’s head by wearing pink camouflage or patterns in neon colors. Some even go as far as to have camo themed weddings, so maybe camouflage bedding doesn’t seem too strange after all.
Using camouflage patterns is a fairly new concept to humanity but the other members of the animal kingdom started to adopt and evolve it far before we thought to. The stripes of a zebra may make it stand out, until it begins to blur when running which confuses predators. The Arctic fox and hare can even change the color of its camo by changing their coats from white during the winter and dark in the summer.