Hiding in plain sight: Americans’ obsession with camouflage is a sign of paranoid times

It’s become an inescapable pop culture touchstone. A pattern of crispy brown leaves interspersed with twigs and moss darting around like advancing thickets, peeking out from underneath jackets, plastered on oversize pants and trucker hats.

Hunting camouflage, a tactical pattern designed to resemble forest undergrowth to disguise hunters during deer season, is seen everywhere from Chappell Roan’s Midwestern Princess hat (and its ill-fated Harris-Walz dupe), to Lana Del Rey’s gator-wrangling husband, to Sweetgreen’s kale-themed camo merchandise, to lacy thong underwear sold by Bass Pro Shops that promises “a look that’s as thrilling as the hunt itself”.

While we live in an age of ephemeral trends – anyone remember mob wife? What about grandpacore? – the recent rise of hunting camo outside hunting culture has been a slow burn.

In 2021, the clothing brand Online Ceramics released a foliage-covered baseball hat. Later that year, GQ called Realtree camouflage “a cool-kid essential”. The designer Marine Serre released a fall 2022 collection featuring a glitchy camo pattern worthy of Elmer Fudd, and an $85 “God’s Favorite” cap became available via the luxury retailer SSENSE. The pattern has found itself increasingly in the closets of urban tastemakers, as likely to see the inside of a coffee shop as the muzzle of a gun. Even prior to this demographic expansion, Realtree, one of the most popular hunting camo licensors, estimated licensed partners sold $4bn in branded products each year.

A model walks the runway during the Marine Serre womenswear fall/winter 2022-2023 show in Paris. Photograph: Peter White/Getty Images

It is also one of the few current fashion objects that could be considered truly democratic, accessible to all: you can buy a woody khaki denim maxi skirt for $300 or a hat with identical print at Walmart for $5.97.

However, hunting camo’s creeping pervasiveness mirrors the rise of populism in the United States and a wholesale rejection of the “elite class”. During the most recent election, the Democratic party abandoned its core voters on the left by swinging rightwards with a bloodless campaign designed to capture centrist and undecided voters. (See: Kamala Harris palling around with Liz Cheney, and the refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.)

Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz hunting camo hat was a doomed attempt to court young, hyper-online voters through an extremely shallow campaign based on fleeting internet parlance over addressing progressive voters’ real needs. As a result, the political system is thoroughly despised by many on the left and the right.

The pattern tends to appear outside military contexts during periods of political instability, says Sarah Scaturro. Photograph: Казаков Анатолий Павлович/Getty Images/iStockphoto

According to Sarah Scaturro, chief conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, whose master’s thesis traced the evolution of camo in fashion, the pattern tends to appear outside military contexts during periods of political instability. During the Vietnam war, the military’s US woodland print was defaced and subverted by protesters as a form of dissent. It ascended again around the late 1990s and early 2000s, a time of unease over Y2K and the contested election of George W Bush. “[The current revival suggests] we’re really in an insecure moment where we don’t really know what will happen,” Scaturro says.

Hunting camo, as worn by the denizens of Duck Dynasty, symbolizes autonomy, self-sufficiency and a rigid belief in personal liberties. “When that survivalist look becomes desirable, to me that reflects that we’re experiencing anxiety as a society,” says Louisa Rogers, an assistant professor of fashion communications at Northumbria University. A recent survey found that gen Z feels the need to make $587,000 a year to consider themselves financially successful; economic unease is being felt across America.

In 2024, hunting camo reflects our culture’s growing individualism, and a desire to arm oneself in the face of great uncertainty. As opposed to military camo, which can symbolize faith in or a direct criticism of our military institutions, hunting camo brings to mind the second amendment. Increasingly, we live in a sick society that forces people to fend for themselves, and what more poignant symbol do we have than the gun enthusiast? The pattern has been co-opted by libertarian self-determinists who reject government in all its forms, so it makes sense that such a paranoid archetype resonates widely in an era where neighbourly trust in one another has all but eroded away. Ironically, the widespread embrace of hunting camo could be the closest we have come to bipartisanship in a long time.

Naomi Campbell in a white camouflage sequin strap dress in the Anna Sui fall 1995 fashion show in New York. Photograph: Jon Levy/AFP/Getty Images

Rogers suggests that some of the appeal of hunting camo to non-hunters might also rest in its inherent taboo. At times, it can be difficult to tell if it’s worn in earnest; meme accounts like Pathetic Fashion and Doomscroll Forever point out the aesthetic homogeneity – Realtree camo hat, white tank and New Balances – that now exists between the political poles. While some may be wearing the pattern to subvert its rightwing associations, others wear it cloaked under several levels of brain-fried irony to the point where they may actually be embracing the outlaw symbolism (like rightwing-coded “it” girls such as Red Scare’s Dasha Nekrasova). Others still, including the midwest musicians Ethel Cain and Chappell Roan, might see it as a way of reclaiming their rural roots.

What do actual hunters make of the broad adoption of their hobby gear? Is it stolen valor? “I don’t think I’ve ever heard another hunter complain about it,” says Lindsay Thomas Jr, chief communications officer of the National Deer Association. “National surveys show a large majority of the public supports hunting, and if the non-hunting public is adopting camo for their own fashion, I think it’s symbolic of that support.” (According to a June survey, public support for legal hunting shooting is 76%, a figure that has been declining since 2021.)

In the end, we’re left with a paradox. “Camouflage is a protective pattern. It’s meant to protect us, conceal us, save us from danger,” says Scaturro.

But wearing camo in the city doesn’t offer protection, literally. What it does offer is a way to blend in, especially now that Donald Trump is about to enter office once again. It’s about “becoming part of a whole,” says Rogers. “There is a sense of community creation there; a leveling out between the people the pattern resonates with and the left-wing consciousness.” In this way, Realtree is the perfect pattern for these anxious times.