How American Camouflage Conquered The World

This camo pattern is everywhere.

[inquisitive electronic music] It's worn by elite soldiers,

ICE agents, actual babies,

influencers, and probably you.

Its origins are as unexpected as its ubiquity.

This story starts in the early 2000s

when the US military had a problem, many problems, in fact.

Soldiers were being deployed in mismatched camo,

which made them stand out on the battlefield

as opposed to blending in.

A small company founded by Cooper Union art students,

Greg Thompson and Caleb Crye, set out to fix it.

The idea was simple, make one camo pattern

that could work almost anywhere.

Their design was intuitive but precise,

using a mix of warm, natural tones

with added gradients and variation.

They called it multicam,

and no two outfits were meant to look the same.

Around that same time, the military had an open call

for submissions for a new army camouflage,

but multicam was rejected.

Instead, the US Army unveiled its own version

of a multi-environment camo called Universal Camouflage

Pattern, or UCP, which looked

as if someone had uploaded a really low res image

of camouflage called one of the most dunked-on camo patterns

of all time.

Users said wearing UCP in the field was like having a road

flare duct tape to their foreheads.

That rejection wasn't the end for multicam.

Special forces units who have looser dress codes adopted it

along with a new aura.

Special forces transformed from looking like bespeckled

suburban dads to Call of Duty style buff dudes.

They were so admired and idolized

that regular infantry soldiers then started

to buy multicam accessories to emulate them.

By 2010, the US Army had turned to using multicam

for deployments in Afghanistan and other military units

and law enforcement soon followed suit.

SWAT teams, police, the FBI, US Marshals,

and Border Patrol all started

to dress like Bradley Cooper in American Sniper.

Civilians were also not immune to the influence

of camo Special Ops drip.

In 2020, Drake and the late Virgil Abloh sat

in the front row at New York Fashion Week wearing matching

multicam rainshells, which sold for over $1,000.

Now the jackets are a staple of the GorpCorp wardrobe

where hiking and tactical gear become everyday streetwear.

Multicam was designed to help soldiers disappear.

Instead, it became one of the most recognizable patterns

in the world.

It's easy to question who has the right to wear it,

but in many ways, civilians might have the strongest claim.

It was made in Brooklyn by art school grads, after all.