2nd Update: Camouflage

I wrote earlier about the street trend of camouflage prints here and here.

This second update is long overdue because I've been seeing more and new kinds of camouflage for over a month now.  Desert camo prints have been gaining on the woodland ones I saw most at first.  But more curiously, there are now lots of camo-like prints in mass market clothes.  I've been seeing women's tops and skirts in floral prints that copy the look and colors of camouflage.  I also saw a skirt with a print of a collage of faces that formed a camo-like pattern.  There has been a lot of pixillated camo on skater-type clothes for men, too.

The transmutation of camouflage into traditional fashion patterns can be read in multiple interesting ways, such as:

• A symbol of how the foreign policy topic of the war has come to be seen also as a domestic issue
  
• An echo of the trend in contemporary art away from the abstract (camo's blobs and squiggles) and towards the figurative (flowers, faces)
• A gesture of solidarity with the troops
• An anti-war statement
• A motif of national insecurity (we want even our pretty patterns to "camouflage" and protect us in daily life)

These patterns haven't actually been having that much success: I've spotted them a lot on sales racks and in thrift stores.  People may be a bit put off by the potentially very loaded message of these prints.  Or they may just find them ugly and difficult to wear -- which they are.  I can't tell yet whether this trend is surviving into spring, but if it does, I'm sure I'll write about it again.