Gear: Chapter 5

Summary

Podcast Summary: Articles of Interest — "Gear: Chapter 5"

Host: Avery Trufelman
Date: November 19, 2025
Main Theme:
A deep exploration of camouflage clothing—how it evolved from pragmatic hunting gear and military necessity to a pop culture phenomenon. Avery examines the origins, function, aesthetics, and symbolism of camouflage across hunting, armed forces, law enforcement, streetwear, and civilian life.

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Introduction to Camouflage and Field Research

• Setting: Avery joins hunters Rebecca and Fisher Neal on public lands in New Jersey. While participating in a hunting lesson, Avery's curiosity is piqued by the clothing—particularly camouflage patterns.
• Memorable experience:
  • Avery describes her first time shooting:
    • “Once I actually hit a clay pigeon… it made my arms ache in this delicious way, like I had lifted weights.” (00:45, Avery Trufelman)
  • Camouflage is discussed as a primary interest:
    • “You guys are talking weapons. I’m like, let’s talk about clothes.” (00:35, Avery Trufelman)

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Camouflage in Hunting: Utility and Myth

• Fisher and Rebecca present different hunting camouflage:
  • Grass reeds for duck hunting
  • White camo for snowy environments
  • Leafy green for perches in early season (02:12–02:38)
• Key insights:
  • “For some animals, the specificity of the camo pattern barely matters.” (02:46, Avery Trufelman)
  • “Camo is your last line of defense…your first line of defense is how and where you set up.” (03:02, Fisher Neal)
• Status symbol:
  • Camouflage doubles as a signifier of expertise:
    • “You want to be seen in, like, the latest and nicest camo pattern.” (03:33, Fisher Neal)
  • Avery wears current U.S. Army camo, sparking a discussion on the differences between military and hunting camouflage.

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The Military-Camo Divide and Cultural Perceptions

• Military camo vs. hunting camo:
  • Fisher clarifies: “Most people going hunting are wearing some sort of specific for hunting branded camouflage. Not that many…are wearing army patterns.” (04:06, Fisher Neal)
• Perceptions within the military:
  • Wearing military camo off-duty is seen as uncool or even “dorky;” there’s a derogatory term for try-hard patriots: “boot” (09:06, Alex Dragone)
  • “Being boot is being like a gung ho little patriot who’s super into being in the military.” (09:10, Avery Trufelman)
  • Even Army paratrooper Drew refuses to wear his uniform off-base:
    • “I rarely ever wear my uniform off base. I don’t want to attract any kind of attention.” (09:45, Drew)
• Cultural implications: Avery wrestles with concerns about fetishizing or disrespecting the military by wearing surplus camo pants as a civilian.

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The Evolution of Military Surplus and Multicam

• From Surplus to High-End:
  • Old army surplus stores—offering cheap, rugged clothing—have mostly disappeared, replaced by high-end, “modern outdoor performance” stores catering to law enforcement and military.
  • Multicam is now omnipresent: “Military grade, licensed, trusted camouflage. Camo was everywhere.” (14:28, Avery Trufelman)
• Creation of Multicam:
  • Interview with Greg Thompson (Crye Precision co-founder):
    • “Multicam is a camouflage pattern that we created in the early 2000s.” (15:22, Greg Thompson)
    • Originated as a response to soldiers being issued mismatched camo, making them stand out on deployment.
    • Multicam aimed to be a “75% solution to environments in general.” (20:59, Greg Thompson)
    • Emphasized warm, natural colors with fading gradients to disrupt outlines.

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Camouflage as Art and Science

• Historical grounding:
  • Camouflage was first developed by artist Abbot Thayer as a fine art experiment, later adopted by the military.
  • Each war or era brought its own style and new patterns, and the practice evolved into crafting distinct camos for various environments: woodland, urban, desert, etc.

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Military Fashion, Trends, and Scandal

• The Rise and Fall of UCP (“Universal Camo Pattern”):

  • The Army chose a digital, pixelated camo for trend reasons: “Digital camos were in. They were a hip military trend.” (29:33–29:42)
  • UCP proved ineffective in real environments and quickly became “probably one of the most dunked on camo patterns of all time.” (31:32, Charles McFarlane)
  • “Anyone who could opt out of wearing UCP did.” (32:24, Avery Trufelman)

• Special Forces Influence:

  • Elite units had gear flexibility and adopted Multicam, turning it into a fashion icon among militaries worldwide:
    • “Delta Force really leaned into wearing multicam.” (32:27, Charles McFarlane)
    • Special Ops units became “style influencers” globally.
    • “If nothing else, the look is undeniably cool.” (39:57, Jasper Craven)

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The Spread and Commercialization of Multicam

• Global adoption:
  • Multicam spread across special forces, then into police, federal agencies, and eventually mainstream civilian clothing.
    • “There were examples all over Eastern Costume’s Warehouse...This is all SWAT teams.” (50:49, Avery Trufelman)
    • “During Black Lives Matter protests, federal agents were deployed...wearing ocp looking exactly like police. Multicam.” (51:14, Avery Trufelman)
• Trend fatigue:
  • “MultiCam has gone through the whole trend cycle. It was niche, and now it's everywhere, which means it's inevitably getting a bit passe...” (51:19, Avery Trufelman)

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Camouflage in Streetwear and Identity

• Transition to Civilian Cool:
  • In Brooklyn and beyond, camouflage is street style—linked to hip-hop, graffiti culture, and high fashion.
• Tim Hotep Aku's Perspective:
  • “I gravitated toward the camo because I'm a person who's been wearing camo for a long time because it's part of my signature. Even amongst my friends...” (57:02, Tim Hotep Aku)
  • Traces his love of camo to Rastafarian fashion, graffiti artists, and hip-hop collectives like Boot Camp Clik.
    • “For me, wearing camo means hip hop. Brooklyn, like Rastafarians, boot camp, click, all that.” (59:27, Tim Hotep Aku)
  • Notes the complexity and cultural context:
    • “Hip hop is a composite culture. It's about mixing disparate elements, putting them together, and giving it your context.” (59:19, Tim Hotep Aku)
• Global nuance:
  • In parts of the Caribbean, civilians are sometimes legally prohibited from wearing camo due to associations with coups and militarism.

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Camouflage, Democracy, and Power

• Dangers of Ubiquity:
  • The blurring of lines between police, military, and civilians in camo uniforms threatens public trust and civil society.
    • “The public could not tell who were police and who were from the federal government. It's not good for our democracy.” (51:21, Avery Trufelman quoting David Lapan)
  • The 1033 Program allows police to acquire military surplus gear for free, increasing "militarized" policing.

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Reflections on Meaning and Appropriation

• Aesthetic layers:
  • Avery and Tim discuss how camo’s meaning changes based on context, wearer, and cultural projections.
    • “You have to get to a point where you are accepting of the water you swim in. And I can talk about why I wear it and I can understand what I think I'm communicating when I wear it without being subsumed by meaning.” (61:28, Tim Hotep Aku)
• Camouflage remains compelling:
  • “OCP might be passe in the military, but in my neighborhood, camouflage is cool.” (56:43, Avery Trufelman)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “As much as camouflage is supposed to be about hiding, it's very much about wanting to be seen.” (03:27, Avery Trufelman)
• “Camo represents things that I really looked up to or was interested in as a child that I think were models of how to exist.” (58:02, Tim Hotep Aku)
• “Special forces is a very small community. They have their own fashion system, their own trends.” (42:34, Charles McFarlane)
• “Whatever the Special Forces adopt moving forward, I'm sure I'll eventually see it trickle down into my local police.” (51:16, Avery Trufelman)
• “The military has trends just like the civilian world has trends. It's just that… the stakes are much higher and they risk severing our trust in each other.” (51:22, Avery Trufelman)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:11–01:36: Avery’s foray into shooting and introduction to camouflage in hunting.
• 03:27–04:23: Significance of camo as a status symbol; differences in hunting vs. military practice.
• 08:17–10:08: Military attitudes toward wearing camo off-duty; “boot” culture.
• 14:28–16:07: Transition from surplus to high-end camouflage gear.
• 15:22–21:21: The invention of Multicam and its functional design principles.
• 27:45–32:24: The drama of Multicam vs. UCP; the rise and rejection of digital camouflage.
• 36:01–42:22: Special Forces as both operators and style leaders.
• 50:03–51:26: Multicam's pervasiveness among global militaries, police, militias, and protest movements.
• 56:52–61:28: Fashion, cultural adaptation, and camouflage’s multifaceted meaning in civilian life.

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Conclusion

“Gear: Chapter 5” traces the rise, fall, and cultural adoption of camouflage, showing how a pattern designed for invisibility has become a marker of identity, group belonging, authority, and even rebellion. The story of camo is a story about fashion, military history, policing, subcultures, trends, and the layered meanings we literally and figuratively wear on our sleeves.

Transcript

[Tim Hotep Aku]

Did you think it was gonna be easy? Did you think you were gonna waddle your way through it? Prepare yourself now for chapter five.

[Avery Trufelman]

Okay, ready? Pull. That was my first time ever shooting a gun. This was my second.

[Fisher Neal]

You're just rushing now.

[Avery Trufelman]

That's Fisher Neal. He's a hunter and a hunting coach. A hunter named Fisher.

[Fisher Neal]

Oh, you were really close.

[Greg Thompson]

That one.

[Avery Trufelman]

Fisher's being so patient with me. We were on public lands in New Jersey where you can shoot turkey. Or in our case, shoot clay pucks. Or in my case, miss clay pucks. I was so bad at shooting. You want to go gun? You don't want to keep trying? I don't know. I did. That's my friend Rebecca. She actually is a hunter. Even though she lives in New York City, where it's very hard to go hunting, she was here brushing up on her skills with Fisher. This is her hunting lesson. I had just come to tag along with my microphone, and then I got roped into this lesson. You guys are talking weapons. I'm like, let's talk about clothes.

[Fisher Neal]

We'll get there.

[Avery Trufelman]

I really wanted to ask Fisher and Rebecca about camouflage. I imagined it was an important part of hunting. It's what I associate most with gun culture. Right. Hunters wear camo. Wait, so can I ask you about camouflage?

[Fisher Neal]

Not yet.

[Avery Trufelman]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Fisher Neal]

Not yet.

[Avery Trufelman]

I assumed camo would be fundamental. I thought it would be the first thing we talked about. I kept putting my gun down and whining about it. When can I ask you about camouflage?

[Fisher Neal]

After we're done shooting.

[Avery Trufelman]

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

[Fisher Neal]

Take one more.

[Avery Trufelman]

One more.

[Radiotopia Representative]

Hey.

[Fisher Neal]

We just had to tell you. It was the last one.

[Avery Trufelman]

Look at that. That was so cool. Once I actually hit a clay pigeon. I could see why my fellow Americans love to shoot stuff. It is super fun. It made my arms ache in this delicious way, like I had lifted weights. Oh, it really hurts. But I also think I had such a fun because we didn't actually kill anything. I think I'm too big of a weenie vegetarian for that. And it was only after this rite of passage that it was finally camouflage time.

[Fisher Neal]

Let's talk about them.

[Avery Trufelman]

Let's talk about them.

[Fisher Neal]

Show me what you got.

[Avery Trufelman]

Rebecca and Fisher laid out a bunch of their camouflage clothes.

[Alex Dragone]

All of my camo is mostly duck.

[Avery Trufelman]

They had camo printed with reeds and grasses for duck hunting.

[Fisher Neal]

It's camo white for the snow. This pattern is actually meant to blend with the sky with the leaves off the trees.

[Avery Trufelman]

So this is when you're up in.

[Fisher Neal]

A perch up In a perch in.

[Avery Trufelman]

The late season, fisher's got an early season perch camo that's green and leafy.

[Fisher Neal]

Exactly. This color palette I'm not so sure that I love. But at the same time, as colorblind as deer are, it may not matter.

[Avery Trufelman]

That's the funny part. For some animals, the specificity of the camo pattern barely matters.

[Fisher Neal]

Deer are colorblind.

[Avery Trufelman]

You could basically wear black and white.

[Fisher Neal]

With turkeys, it's different. With turkeys, they see the full spectrum of color.

[Avery Trufelman]

Even so, camo isn't what's gonna catch you. A turkey.

[Fisher Neal]

Camo is your last line of def. In terms of hiding. Your first line of defense is how and where you set up more than. It's about the camo pattern.

[Avery Trufelman]

So it doesn't really matter.

[Fisher Neal]

It matters, but I don't think as much as people may think. And yet I have a million different patterns, even though I'm telling you it's not that important. I will wear different patterns for different scenarios, and I have a bunch of different outfits.

[Avery Trufelman]

As much as camouflage is supposed to be about hiding, it's very much about wanting to be seen.

[Fisher Neal]

You want to be seen in, like, the latest and nicest camo pattern.

[Avery Trufelman]

I had worn camouflage to hunt that day as well, and it was also, in its way, the latest. May I ask for your opinion on my pants?

[Fisher Neal]

They're cool.

[David Assetta]

Yeah.

[Fisher Neal]

I would hunt in that for sure.

[Avery Trufelman]

Yeah. For, like, any particular season or time.

[Fisher Neal]

Early fall. Yeah, early fall or turkey season. You know what I mean? Because there's a lot of green in the pattern. They'd be good turkey hunting pants.

[Avery Trufelman]

I was wearing the most current version of camouflage used by the United States Army. Well, I guess I just wonder what you think of that connection.

[Fisher Neal]

I mean, there really is actually a separation between military and hunting camo. You'll find that most people going hunting are wearing some sort of specific for hunting branded camouflage. Not that many of them are wearing army patterns.

[Avery Trufelman]

It makes sense. Hunting and fighting are different activities, but.

[Fisher Neal]

In both cases, you are trying to hide from something.

[Avery Trufelman]

Although military camo, like hunting camo, also has that element of wanting to be seen. It is, in part, aesthetic. Military camouflage is also subject to trends and fashion cycles, and that's where it can get dangerous. After the break, I was just telling a group of people about Radiotopia the other day, and I almost started crying. Radiotopia is how I'm able to make this show. Radiotopia is a podcast distribution network. What that means is that this is how the show makes money. This is how I eat and pay my rent. Radiotopia sells the ads on this show and they make the money back, but they paid me this money up front. You know, they gave me this guarantee. They believed in me. And the amazing thing is they're a non profit. Their sole purpose is to make sure podcasts like mine, which are totally un lucrative, exist. This ad based model can keep media free and available to all. We're not behind a paywall, but we do ask once a year there's this fun drive and that's what I'm coming to you with now because it is a way to support articles of interest, but it's really a way to support the future of media and to make sure there's still a space for like strange long form shows that no one else would be able to fund. Go to Radiotopia fm. Donate. Gifting season is ramping up and I think the best gifts are the ones that I'm so excited to give because I can't wait to see the look on their faces. The granddaddy of great gifting is Macy's. They've been doing it for 167 years. The reason that Macy's has stuck around is their curation and their personalized guidance. These days it's all too easy to just click a button online and buy stuff. But Macy's originated as a department store and they know what it's like to put thought and energy and excitement into the ritual of gift giving. Shop@macy's.com or in store. I first learned about Gusto when I used it. I used it in my first job and it was the way that we managed everything. Payroll, benefits, compliance, hr, everything. Gusto made it really really easy. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, onboard and support your team from anywhere. Small businesses can save time with automated tools built right in like offer letters, onboarding materials, direct deposit, and so much more. It's quick and simple to switch to Gusto. Just transfer your existing data to get up and running fast and you don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll. Try gusto [e-mail] articles and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free [e-mail] articles one more time. Gusto.com articles so I'm going hunting soon. I wonder if I should get one of these to like see if it actually can do camouflage I bought those military camo pants with Alex Dragone, the Marine reservist who brought me to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. That's where we went to the military base with the exchange on it. That was the store where you could buy everything from alcohol to bicycles to army combat uniforms or ACUs, because it's the military and they like to abbreviate everything. The moment I picked up those camouflage pants, they had a whiff of sacrilege about them. I wanted them, but I, as a regular civilian, am not allowed to purchase anything at all from the Army Exchange store. So of course, I immediately turned to Alex and asked if he would buy the pants for me and I'd pay him back. Oof. Is that not allowed?

[Alex Dragone]

I don't know if you could wear these as a civilian. I don't know if there's any laws against it. I know it would look kind of weird.

[Avery Trufelman]

I disagreed. I thought I would look cool if I wore these pants. But it struck Alex as extremely dorky. Especially in the Marines. It is very uncool to wear uniform shit if you don't have to. Like, you will never see Marines in their camouflage off base. Marines will never go to the airport in their uniforms to board the plane early.

[Alex Dragone]

There are some people who, like, won't take military discounts because they just don't want to be associated with that when they're not at work.

[Avery Trufelman]

Certainly in Alex's experience in the Marines and in a number of other branches that I've talked to, it is not cool to show off that you're in the military. So much so that there's even a derogatory term for it. Boot.

[Alex Dragone]

Having a straight up buzzed head is like the most boot thing you can do.

[Avery Trufelman]

Being boot is being like a gung ho little patriot who's super into being in the military.

[Alex Dragone]

Dorky, eager new guy. Anything you do in boot camp that is not considered cool.

[Avery Trufelman]

A paratrooper named Drew told me that in the army they call this basic. As in basic training.

[Drew (Paratrooper)]

You have probably drank the Kool Aid a little too much.

[Avery Trufelman]

Drew said, you can always see this basic attitude in off duty clothes.

[Drew (Paratrooper)]

So they like, tuck their shirts into their jeans and wear their combat boots. Out in the civilian world, this is.

[Avery Trufelman]

Why neither Alex nor Drew would ever wear camo pants when they weren't working.

[Drew (Paratrooper)]

I rarely ever wear my uniform off base. I don't want to attract any kind of attention.

[Alex Dragone]

It's a really big thing in the military. If you can pass as non military, that's a good thing. Why why? Maybe because there's such a well known thing for people to, like, want to look like they're military, and it becomes the opposite reaction. It's like if you have to try to look military, then you probably don't actually know what it's like.

[Avery Trufelman]

I didn't think I wanted to buy those camo pants to look military. I just thought they looked cool. But then I was like, do I think they look cool because I subconsciously think the military is cool. And then in wearing these pants, would I both fetishize and disrespect the military? Obviously, as you know, I did end up buying and wearing the pants. And that's only because I was yanked out of my internal reverie by this other shopper who poked his head out of the racks. You can wear this all you want. Oh, really? I could wear it even if you're a civilian? Oh, yeah, don't be impersonating a military service member. Yeah, I don't want to be offensive. This major named Nate had come over from Civil Affairs Command in Fort Wadsworth, Long island, because their exchange out there doesn't sell clothes. You can buy him in any army surplus.

[Alex Dragone]

Oh, yeah, that's a fair point.

[Avery Trufelman]

Was it a fair point that surplus seller, Logan McGrath was telling me how hard it is to stock military surplus now? And when I took Bing Dong Duan, that RISD grad student, on that very disappointing trip to my local surplus store, we only found cheap imitation M65 jackets and knockoff mid century militaria. We didn't find any actual military clothes. But there's like no real army. There's no military surplus store anymore that sells like this stuff. Not, probably not around here. Go to other states, you find them. And so, in search of modern military surplus, I went to the state of Virginia, specifically to the city of Virginia beach, home to the largest concentration of military personnel outside of the Pentagon. I was like, all right, if it's anywhere, it's here. Let's see if there's a store where I can find these camo pants that I got at the store on the military base. So once I landed in Virginia Beach, I searched for a well rated military surplus store. And when I went there, it was not the dark, musty Army Navy surplus store that I was imagining. Nor was it the cheap, weird imitation knockoff store that I went to in Brooklyn. No, no, the surplus store that I went to in an actual military town is an entirely different military surplus store. And I got to discover it with Claudette. I get. People get In a car and, you know, they go in interesting places and I'll go because I want to see. I love it. Claudette was the cab driver who took me to the surplus store. She'd never been in there before, probably come past here a hundred times. She parked in the strip mall and came in with me, which I'm really grateful for. Otherwise I'd just be muttering to myself like I usually do. This is like a really different place. This store was high ceiling, fluorescent lit with white walls and concrete floors, unadorned, but very clean and stark with pounding hardcore music. It's like the ultimate hiking store, you know, like everything's all the modern heavy duty stuff. Modern stuff, yeah. There were some bins of socks and hats and underwear, but most of the gear was displayed neatly on circular racks. Look at this raincoat.

[David Assetta]

Suez.

[Avery Trufelman]

And this gear was much, much fancier than what I saw at Fort Hamilton. The rain jackets were made of buttery synthetics. The fleeces were teddy bear soft. The shoes were feather light. Claudette and I were loving all this top of the line outdoor gear and we were totally going to buy some. And then we saw the prices. This is nice. Oh my God, look how much it is. Jesus, this is nice. $430. This is nice. This was not your grandpa's military surplus. This was not the place to get high quality basics for cheap. Like Claudette and I weren't even quite sure what this was like. Are they new or used? That's a good question. I thought surplus always meant used. I think it's just like extra. You know, they made too many. I mean, I can ask. I asked. The cashier stammered and said some of it is sometimes surplus, but I didn't see any of that. Everything appeared to be brand new and it was all high end, extreme outdoor performance clothes that were aimed at police and members of the armed forces. Even though anyone can walk in and buy this stuff 149, it's like REI prices at this price point. Why wouldn't you just buy your extra gear at rei? A lot of service members do. But one reason why you might choose this quote unquote surplus store is camouflage. Military grade, licensed, trusted camouflage. Camo was everywhere. Check this out. They've got gauze in camo. Oh, cool. Camo was on backpacks, it was on boot covers, it was on shoes, it was on pants. Although I could not find the same pants that I bought on the military base. Instead, the pants and nearly all of the camo at the store was a modern camouflage pattern called Multicam and this is a multicam. I like the multicam. Multicam camouflage is in shades of green and brown and beige. It looks, you know, it's like a camouflage, but it has a lot of fades and gradients in it. Multicam is a camouflage pattern that was made by a private company.

[Greg Thompson]

Multicam is a camouflage pattern that we created in the early 2000s.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is Greg Thompson, one of the co founders of Kry Precision. Greg and his co founder Caleb Kry were graduates of Cooper Union. They were design students.

[Greg Thompson]

None of us had any specific background in textiles, apparel, military anything. None of us were former operatives. Everybody kind of assumes that some someone of us were former operators. It's not the case.

[Avery Trufelman]

I was talking to Greg in Kry's factory right here in Brooklyn, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

[Greg Thompson]

We started this while I was still.

[Avery Trufelman]

In college as a student. Greg had already started getting into the strange world of military contracts.

[Greg Thompson]

We always had an interest in all things military and all, you know, it's like boy stuff like monster trucks and that kind of thing. It's like that's all in the same kind of world.

[Avery Trufelman]

Greg found his way in in earnest through US Army Natick Soldier Systems. It's that military base I went to with the cold chambers and the heat chambers and Andy the mannequin and the clueless closet for soldiers. It's that place that designs and tests all the uniforms.

[Greg Thompson]

Natick was having an industry day so we threw our hat in the ring.

[Avery Trufelman]

Greg and Caleb actually got some early bids to do some ideating and some concepting.

[Greg Thompson]

So really we're just almost creating the outline, if you will, for what they should be doing.

[Avery Trufelman]

You can think of Natick like a research laboratory and these students from a prestigious design school, like young consultants.

[Greg Thompson]

We were so cheap. We're just young company going. They're paying us to like solve problems.

[Avery Trufelman]

And the advantage that Greg and Caleb had was that in all of their projects they took on for Natick, they attacked each problem like design students.

[Greg Thompson]

We kind of did it on our own in a sense that like, okay, so where are your soldier guys?

[Alex Dragone]

Let's talk to them.

[Greg Thompson]

Let's understand their problems. Like what are your general areas of concern? Okay, let's go to every single major tech group at Natick.

[Avery Trufelman]

Natick is mostly a research and design laboratory. They have active duty soldiers cycle in and out for tests. But Greg wanted to talk to soldiers who were really living their day to day lives.

[Greg Thompson]

We didn't see soldiers at Natick.

[Avery Trufelman]

They began leaving Natick and taking product development into Their own hands.

[Greg Thompson]

We started sneaking down to Fort Benning all the time. So we didn't tell them because that would have pissed them off.

[Avery Trufelman]

Fort Benning in western Georgia is where U.S. army Rangers are trained. Army Rangers are an elite infantry force.

[Greg Thompson]

So we basically got in with the Rangers down there, and this group of.

[Avery Trufelman]

Rangers became essentially a focus group for cry.

[Greg Thompson]

We were evaluating stuff with guys who had just been deployed over Rangers who had clearly been through a bit. And that way, it gave us more feedback.

[Avery Trufelman]

Around the year 2000, the feedback from the Rangers revealed a major problem. Camouflage was in crisis. The Army Rangers were getting issued mismatched camo.

[Greg Thompson]

When guys deploy, they're wearing desert uniforms with woodland body armor, because body armor is expensive, and they didn't get around to procuring it.

[Avery Trufelman]

And when you mix camouflage patterns, then you stand out. That defeats the purpose of camouflage.

[Greg Thompson]

It does not make sense for any force to be wearing multiple camouflage patterns.

[Avery Trufelman]

So how did the state of camo get so messy? Let me tell you real quick. Camouflage is more of an art than a science. And if you need proof, camouflage was actually invented by an artist, the American portrait and landscape painter Abbot Thayer. This was a fine art exercise that thayer created in 1909 by playing with light and shadow. And Thayer realized he'd discovered something kind of remarkable. So he brought it to the United States military. But Teddy Roosevelt essentially laughed Abbot Thayer out of the halls of government. But the French, however, were way more open to the idea of camouflage, Maybe because Abbot Thayer went to art school in Paris, and the French really adopted camouflage as their own practice. That's why camouflage has a French name. Camouflage, meaning the discharge of smoke. Right. It hides things. The French military started painting shapes and shadows on their trucks and observation posts and introduced the idea of camouflage back to Americans During World War I, when we realized, oh, the French are really onto something. This is a good idea. You're way less conspicuous if your stuff is not a solid color. But the idea of applying camouflage to clothing really took off in the Vietnam War, where Special Forces were wearing camouflage to blend in alongside their South Vietnamese guerrilla fighting comrades. And in Vietnam, the infantry started getting issued camo helmet covers. And soon the Marines and a handful of army units were wearing full camo fatigues. And shortly thereafter, in the 80s and 90s, it became a new practice that for every landscape the United States military planned to deploy to, they should have a new matching camouflage.

[Greg Thompson]

We're going to have a woodland, we're going to have an urban, we're going to have a desert. We're going to have a Whatever.

[Avery Trufelman]

While Krai was working with Natick, 911 happened. And with the subsequent declaration of the War on Terror came a new and urgent design question. What camouflage would the army wear for this new war, which was going to deploy them to Afghanistan, which is an extremely varied terrain, where it's like, you.

[Greg Thompson]

Might be down in a village and you might transition to a river valley, and all of a sudden it becomes very green. And then two hours later, you're climbing up a mountain and it's brown again and rocky.

[Avery Trufelman]

Was the army supposed to bring changes of clothes for each terrain?

[Greg Thompson]

It wouldn't have helped you even if you had all the money in the world to buy eight different sets. You know, I'm gonna carry and switch it.

[Avery Trufelman]

Clearly, mixing camos wasn't working. So Greg and Caleb at Cry Precision had this idea. What if there was one camouflage pattern that could work almost anywhere?

[Greg Thompson]

So the point was, multicam was sort of like your 75% solution to environments in general, which is gonna be better than having a really bad camouflage in that particular environment.

[Avery Trufelman]

In the same way, the M43 jacket was the field jacket designed for all environments. Multicam is the camouflage that was designed to blend in with all environments.

[Greg Thompson]

So that was. It's like. That's why we called it multicam.

[Avery Trufelman]

Multicam is an effective camouflage, although, as Fisher the hunter said, the pattern of camouflage is just one thing that keeps you hidden. It's also about where you're hiding and what else is covering you. And in the case of the soldier, it's also a matter of hiding from thermal and infrared and ultraviolet sensors and from radar. But if we're only talking about hiding from the naked eye, multicam can do the trick. And here is why. First of all, multicam has the right amount of colors.

[Greg Thompson]

A certain amount of colors. I think 7 is probably a good amount. 3 would not be enough. 12 would be too many, because they would just get lost.

[Avery Trufelman]

In the classic multicam pattern, the colors are greens and browns and beiges. These colors are warm.

[Greg Thompson]

Most things in nature have some level of warmth in them. Even like a building that you built, it came from stone and likely grew a little bit of green stuff on it. Everything sort of takes on slightly warmer tones. Very few things remain cold.

[Avery Trufelman]

And multicam has a lot of highlights and lowlights and gradients and fades in the pattern. There are a lot of points of interest, and no two outfits end up looking quite the same.

[Greg Thompson]

If you have all of your guys kind of looking the same, then as soon as you spot one guy, you can very easily pick out, Right? Right.

[Avery Trufelman]

Kry developed the idea of an all terrain camouflage in 2001, and in 2004 they trademarked it.

[Greg Thompson]

We made it because we thought it was smart and we wanted to actually use that pattern in the stuff we were making. So we leaned forward and started printing runs right away.

[Avery Trufelman]

Krai had customers, but not in the regular Army. Regular soldiers don't get to just go out and buy their own camouflage. However, elite soldiers in the Special Forces actually can just go out and buy their clothes. So you were always talking to the.

[Greg Thompson]

Special Force guys pretty much from day one.

[Avery Trufelman]

Although Greg began his research by talking to the Army Rangers, who are already pretty elite, he was very quickly introduced to even more elite ranks of soldiers. Above them, the Special Forces. We've already talked a little bit about the Green Berets in the army and the SEALs in the Navy. They did a lot of covert operations during Vietnam. The Green Berets were the ones learning other languages and going across enemy lines. And the seals were doing a lot of foreign recon. These missions were top secret. And even personnel within the military hardly knew what these teams were doing. The Navy seals notoriously had a code of secrecy amongst their ranks. And after the Vietnam War ended, the army added on another top secret small specialty team. In 1977, Delta Force was created to respond to high profile hijackings and hostage situations. Delta Force is an elite team known as the unit, and it's selected from the army with a grueling screening program that culminates in a timed 40 mile hike with a 70 pound rucksack. But this super elite special team was a bit removed from the rest of the military. And this was revealed in 1980 when Delta Force was sent in to rescue 66 hostages in Iran. And they simply were not trained to communicate with the other branches of the military. This rescue mission ended up being a disaster. Eight service members died in a plane crash and not a single hostage was rescued. It was a catastrophe. And so that year 1980, Joint Special Operations Command was established, or JSOC. JSOC is a hub where each branch of the military established their own special operations, their own elite teams so they could all coordinate with each other. It's like the gifted and talented of the US military. There's the Army's Delta Force. The Navy has SEAL Team 6. The Air Force has the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. These are supposed to be the best of the best from each unit, the highest tier of each branch, all working together. And you get an idea of just how special and how elite these top tier teams are. When you realize There are only 400 operators on SEAL Team 6, it's tiny. And the more small and elite and rarefied these teams are, the more freedom they have, including when it comes to their uniforms.

[Drew (Paratrooper)]

Every unit has, whether conventional or special, has what's called a tactical standard operating procedure or also a blue book. Drew the paratrooper in the bluebook for special units it will outline these are the third party items you're allowed to wear. So their bluebook outlines, hey, you can wear civilian hiking boots. But it needs to meet these three criteria.

[Avery Trufelman]

In high level special forces, the criteria are not strict.

[Drew (Paratrooper)]

They're usually pretty lenient. I've got a buddy of mine in a special operations unit who wears ultra lone peaks as his boots. And I'm like, dude, that's like a, that's like a running shoe. Another one has a great story about a guy was wearing high top bands.

[Avery Trufelman]

Delta Force guys have so much leeway when they want to buy gear, they can just plunk down a credit card.

[Greg Thompson]

Those are the people who have the ability to make their own decisions and are also maybe a little more open to some of the crazy stuff that you might pitch.

[Avery Trufelman]

KRI had been printing runs of Multicam themselves and Delta Force was very interested in this technology of multi environment camouflage.

[Greg Thompson]

We're talking to these guys and saying, hey, we can make you these uniforms. They're like, oh, by the way, we get pouches from those guys. Can they get multicam too?

[Avery Trufelman]

The Delta Force guys want some of their other accessories from other companies to come in multicam too.

[Greg Thompson]

So basically what we ended up doing was selling fabric 1 yard, 5 yards, 10 yards to whoever wanted it.

[Avery Trufelman]

Kry began licensing the pattern. It seemed like this new camouflage was really starting to get some traction. And so in 2004, when Natick had an open request for companies to put in bids to become the official new camouflage pattern for the United States army, for the whole army, Kry submitted Multicam. It seemed like multicam would be a shoo in. And then Kry got the news that they lost the bid. Natick rejected Multicam. And this is where all the trouble began.

[Greg Thompson]

It's a drama that you couldn't make up. It's probably the greatest drama we've been exposed to.

[Avery Trufelman]

After multicam lost the bid, Natick turned around and announced that they had designed an all purpose camouflage pattern that could blend in with most environments. And Greg was like, wait, what? That's our concept.

[Greg Thompson]

Like multi environment camouflage was Something that we protected.

[Avery Trufelman]

The United States army premiered a new camouflage pattern called the Universal camouflage pattern. And it's the army, so it has an acronym and it's called ucp. But when Greg saw ucp, he was like, there is no way UCP actually works universally. This new army camouflage pattern was the complete opposite of everything Greg knew to be true about good multi environment camo. Like it was not made with warm natural tones.

[Greg Thompson]

The Army's universal is like blue.

[Avery Trufelman]

UCP isn't actually blue. It's sort of like slate gray to beige. But it's a cold color scheme.

[Greg Thompson]

By the time you've laundered it a few times, it's blue gray. And that shines very bright. And like it just glows. It's not warm.

[Avery Trufelman]

Not only was UCP in all the wrong colors, it didn't look organic. It was stiff and rigid. UCP was a digital looking, pixelated camouflage. It looked as if someone had uploaded an image of camouflage in a really low resolution. What was the logic behind the digital pattern?

[David Assetta]

There was some research that early research that indicated that it was more effective.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is retired Lieutenant Colonel David Assetta. He's the chief public affairs officer at Natick Soldier Systems center where they design and test all the clothes for the military.

[David Assetta]

The testing showed us that the universe camouflage pattern had some degree of effectiveness in a lot of different environments. And that's one of the reasons it was chosen.

[Avery Trufelman]

And another one of the reasons the army adopted UCP was digital looking. Camos were in. They were a hip military trend.

[David Assetta]

Everybody wanted to jump on the digital bandwagon.

[Avery Trufelman]

The Canadian military kicked off the digital camo trend in the late 90s in.

[David Assetta]

The Marine Corps, they were the first of the US Forces to adopt the digital pattern.

[Avery Trufelman]

And when the Marines adopted their Digital Camo in 2002, the spokesperson for the Marines said, we want to be instantly recognized as a force to be reckoned with. We want them to see us coming a mile away in our new uniforms. Wild, right? This is camouflage for standing out in the early aughts. Pixelated camo became the IT camouflage. Every military branch wanted their own digital camouflage, whether or not it was actually practical. The weirdest example of this was that the Navy developed a blue digital camo uniform and issued it out to sailors. And right away sailors were like, what the hell? We don't want to blend in with the ocean. That's really bad. So that one didn't last very long. But the point is, with some of these digital camos, fashion was taking precedent over safety, which is exactly what Greg Thompson was worried about when, as he saw it, the army was adopting a digital camo and just calling it universal. The army, however, stands by its universality.

[David Assetta]

It's in the name a universal camouflage pattern.

[Avery Trufelman]

The United States army spent $5 billion developing and producing these new uniforms in the new digital UCP. And when they were widely adopted in 2005, it was undeniable that UCP was hated immediately.

[Charles McFarlane]

It is trashed.

[Avery Trufelman]

Costume historian and journalist Charles McFarlane is.

[Charles McFarlane]

Probably like one of the most dunked on camo patterns of all time.

[Avery Trufelman]

Charles also wrote an article for the Baffler about UCP called Univers.

[Charles McFarlane]

And I think a lot of it is bound up in the media coverage of the worst years of the Iraq war.

[Avery Trufelman]

It was a hated camo for a hated war, a bad look for a bad war.

[Charles McFarlane]

Burning Humvees in the streets of Baghdad or bloody bodies being dragged out of houses in Fallujah.

[Avery Trufelman]

And there were our soldiers among that chaos, standing right out in their ucp. I suppose UCP was truly universal in that it universally blended in with the nothing.

[Charles McFarlane]

And you'd see these photos on the COVID of the New York Times, you know, of soldiers in these heavily wooded valleys in Afghanistan, just all browns and greens and then like just sticking out in this like nearly white looking pattern.

[Avery Trufelman]

Anyone who could opt out of wearing UCP did.

[Charles McFarlane]

The first people who are able to do anything about that are US Special Forces.

[Avery Trufelman]

Delta Force really leaned into wearing multicam. And even though Delta Force operators made up a teeny tiny fraction of the troops in Iraq, multicam started to spread and it would continue to spread farther and farther within the Special Forces and then beyond the Special Forces and then beyond the United States and beyond the military. Eventually everyone would want to buy and wear multicam. And this is because the Special Forces became within and beyond the military style influencers. America began an infatuation with special operators, including with the way they dressed. And it all started with the war on terror because this was the war that really changed the role of Special Operators. Special Ops, which gets all these questions of like, who are these guys? Well, the special Ops fetish is a huge thing.

[Jasper Craven]

Yeah.

[Avery Trufelman]

Author and Mariner veteran Phil Kley we.

[Radiotopia Representative]

So in theory it is Congress that declares war.

[Avery Trufelman]

After 9 11, Congress basically gave the executive branch carte blanche.

[Radiotopia Representative]

Congress wrote an authorization for the use of military force in 2001 that was extremely open ended right after the terror attacks. And administrations have been using that all over the place since then.

[Avery Trufelman]

American presidents don't to want really have to ask Congress to vote on wars anymore. They don't have to defend or justify them in terms of cost or effort or loss of life.

[Radiotopia Representative]

We have military campaigns that are ongoing, which American presidents never asked Congress to authorize, which means there was never an active debate, which means there's actually little political will behind the campaigns as long.

[Avery Trufelman]

As the American public is relatively unaware of the costs of the campaign.

[Radiotopia Representative]

We don't like forever wars. We don't like having troop deployments, but we also really don't like the bad guys winning. We don't like it when ISIS rises up. We don't like the Taliban taking over. This has created this sort of odd set of incentives where American presidents never want to say that we're at war, but they always want to say that we're killing the bad guys.

[Avery Trufelman]

And so how do we have it all? How do we keep a small army and a small footprint and a small death toll while still trying to kill the corporate, quote unquote, bad guys?

[Radiotopia Representative]

When ISIS rose up in Iraq, the Obama administration relied on earlier authorizations for the use of military force to justify going back in without asking Congress to actually vote on that. Instead, they introduced special operators and started ramping up airstrikes while arguing publicly that this didn't really count as war.

[Avery Trufelman]

Joint Special Operations command became a way that American presidents can just quietly low key wage wars.

[Radiotopia Representative]

Joe Biden bragging about not being at war while we're actually doing on the ground raids in East Africa, the Trump administration is currently attacking the Houthis in Yemen.

[Avery Trufelman]

A huge change happened in the way special forces were used. And the war on terror was a big pivot point because during the war on terror, the number of special operators grew and so did the number of their raids.

[Radiotopia Representative]

Joint Special Operations command goes from I think something like 12 raids a month in early 2004 to closer to 300 by late 2006.

[Avery Trufelman]

Special forces were sent out day and night to perform raid after raid after raid, helicoptering onto rooftops, breaking down doors, storming houses of suspected terror, yanking them out into the streets, grabbing their hard drives. The Special forces had never been so busy and they had never been so visible. It wasn't so secret what Delta Force and Seal Team six were doing. The whole military could see them now. And also during the war on terror, the American public at large was also getting a grasp of who these teams were were. Because the United States military was also pushing special forces into the spotlight.

[Jasper Craven]

They sort of used the seals as a recruiting tool because like, what's a Better story than just like, a badass SEAL going and killing Osama bin Laden.

[Avery Trufelman]

Jasper Craven, reporter on veterans issues.

[Jasper Craven]

So they, like, saw this as a way to goose recruitment, improve the military's image.

[Avery Trufelman]

One of the first big breaks in the Navy Seals code of silence was the 2007 book and 2013 film Lone Survivor. There ain't nothing I can't do no.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

Sky too high, no sea too rough.

[Avery Trufelman]

The author of the book Lone Survivor is Marcus Luttrell. He was the recipient of the Navy Cross, which is the second highest award you can get below the Medal of Honor. And yes, Luttrell was the lone survivor of a firefight in Afghanistan, and the SEALs asked him to write his personal account during his enlistment. Like, arguably, this book was funded by the American taxpayer.

[Jasper Craven]

Yes, yes. They, like, gave him book leave to write this book because they were, like, desperate for some redeeming story in this.

[Avery Trufelman]

Failed war, which is wild. Like, this is a story about all of Luttrell's friends getting killed. It's in essence a story about how a lot of things went wrong. You wouldn't think that this would exactly be recovered recruitment material, but the military was clinging to the iconography of the badass special operator.

[Radiotopia Representative]

Special operations often offers a neat, clean story.

[Avery Trufelman]

Phil Kley, again, if you think of.

[Radiotopia Representative]

A lot of the media, television, movies, a lot of them focus around special operations.

[Avery Trufelman]

Think about Zero Dark Thirty, Black Hawk Down, American Sniper, and Act of Valor, which was a movie featuring actual active duty Navy SEALs. The SEAL code of silence has been completely smashed to smithereens. It's like a tired joke now that you're not a Navy SEAL unless you have a podcast. And it was like a fixture of stories in magazines and late night news reports that followed Navy SEALs as they conducted a raid.

[Radiotopia Representative]

The kind of quintessential element of the special operations community. Just the raid, right? There's a bad guy somewhere. And usually they are a really bad guy. You know, most of the special operations guys can tell you about the torture house in the basement. That and a bunch of tough American warriors gear up, they go get the guy, and they go home. And that has a nice, neat narrative structure. It's got a beginning, middle, and end. In wars that have no beginning, middle or end, really.

[Avery Trufelman]

Special Operations provided heroes to believe in, while the rest of the army ended up looking like unfortunate lost Americans caught up in the confusing forever wars, which seemed not to be going well at all. Special operators were out there doing their thing, hunting down bad guys, taking care of business, kicking ass.

[Jasper Craven]

If you're really searching for some progress that the military is making. It's. Yeah, it's sort of like knocking out some guys here and there and they can still do that.

[Avery Trufelman]

The United States wasn't necessarily winning these wars or finding any sort of overarching sense of meaning in whatever it was we were fighting for. But at least with these Special Forces.

[Jasper Craven]

Guys, if nothing else, the look is undeniably cool.

[Avery Trufelman]

With their new increased visibility, the Special Forces developed an aesthetic which they did not used to have. Again, they used to be a secret. They didn't used to have a style.

[Charles McFarlane]

Look at photos of the first Special Forces units going into Afghanistan in 2001, and they look like a suburban dad on a fishing trip.

[Avery Trufelman]

Charles McFarlane.

[Charles McFarlane]

Again, compare that to what the fuck's his name? The Chris Kyle kind of like look, right?

[Avery Trufelman]

Chris Kyle was the SEAL who American Sniper is about. He had the Special Forces look. Bearded, brawny backwards, baseball cap, lip full of dip.

[Charles McFarlane]

Dudes with like huge beards and like long hair and totally ripped and just wearing like lots of technical gear.

[Avery Trufelman]

Elite Special Forces have long been allowed to have tattoos before conventional soldiers were allowed to have tattoos. They wear a lot of outdoor gear from high end equipment stores. They're the only guys in the military who get to have a rebellious spirit. They call themselves cowboys or pipe hitters or pirates. And while there are women in Special Forces and there have even been some Special Forces teams made entirely of women, by and large, it is an extremely hyper masculine culture and not in a dad's on a fishing trip kind of way.

[Charles McFarlane]

It's a very different world.

[Avery Trufelman]

And a big part of the Special Forces look was multicam. You could really tell that someone was a badass Special Forces guy because he was decked out in the cool camo that he clearly got to choose for himself. He wasn't walking around in that ugly digital UCP pattern that everybody hated. This was how he announced, I am a special operator. Which in the military is one of the coolest things you can be. Krai's timing had been impeccable, to put it crudely. They got in on the ground floor of a style movement. They started multicam right around the start of the war on terror. Special Forces hadn't been a market that anyone was catering to yet the 2000s blew it up. And you just found out by talking to people.

[Greg Thompson]

Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's happening while you're doing it.

[Avery Trufelman]

Delta Force first started wearing it, then the Army Rangers started wearing it. Then it trickled down into the army when infantrymen needed gear, they'd buy their extra accessories in multicam. And the multicam trend hopped to different countries.

[Charles McFarlane]

So the British special forces start to adopt multicam because they're hanging out with Americans.

[Avery Trufelman]

The special forces in Poland and Norway and Australia and New Zealand and other NATO countries, special forces also adopted multicam.

[Charles McFarlane]

Special forces is a very small community. They have their own fashion system, their own trends.

[Avery Trufelman]

And then in foreign militaries, when they saw their special forces in multicam, they liked it so much, they took it a huge step further. A number of countries actually adopted multicam as the official uniform for their whole armies.

[Charles McFarlane]

And then the British conventional forces contract cry to make a multicam for them. They want this cool, very in camouflage, but they also want to preserve some sense of national identity.

[Avery Trufelman]

Australia also hires Cry Precision to make a custom version of multicam for them to. And then so does Georgia and Denmark and Belgium and Portugal and Lebanon and Argentina and Chile and Malta and France.

[Greg Thompson]

So we had to kind of make it for their country, which is fine.

[Avery Trufelman]

Aside from the fact that multicam was cool and in. It was also a very smart diplomatic move for a country to buy their uniforms from a United States company. It signaled a political alignment with the United States, which is ironic considering that by 2010, multicam is pretty much everywhere except on the backs of the American Army. We were still in the digital hated ucp, which is just starting to look embarrassing and bad. And so at long last, Natick finally began to pivot away from the digital pattern.

[David Assetta]

Through our research, we found that there was essentially no real advantage to having a digital pattern.

[Avery Trufelman]

It baffles me that that didn't come up the first time around in the Army's billions of dollars of research developing this pattern.

[Charles McFarlane]

But you know, this is right at the era. This is 2010, 2011.

[Avery Trufelman]

Charles McFarlane also theorizes that the United States army needed a new camouflage because now Obama is president and he needs to rebrand his war.

[Charles McFarlane]

Obama is really trying to own Afghanistan. It's the good war. Iraq was a mistake. Afghanistan, that's where we're supposed to be. So how can we quite literally differentiate what the soldiers look look like in Afghanistan from what they look like in Iraq?

[Avery Trufelman]

Oh, shit. We need to show Americans that there is a change on the ground.

[Charles McFarlane]

Now the U.S. army is looking to adopt a new pattern. They've been told they need to get this camo into the field as soon as possible.

[Avery Trufelman]

And so the search begins for a new camouflage pattern for the United States military. But that's going to take such a long time. The army just really wants to get a new change out as quickly as possible. Just anything to get rid of the ucp. So they put something out in the meantime, just something as a placeholder while the US military is developing its next camo.

[Charles McFarlane]

It's named oefcp. So Operation Enduring Freedom. So that was the operation in Afghanistan. Camouflage Pattern, oefcp.

[Avery Trufelman]

Catchy. That's the name of the little intermediary pattern.

[Charles McFarlane]

Armies love acronyms, right? Because you can hide behind confusing language.

[Avery Trufelman]

And what the army is hiding behind that confusing language is that OEFCP is just a fake name they made up for multicam, literally. Multicam. The army just bought Multicam in bulk and they issued it to all US soldiers deploying to Afghanistan at the peak of Obama's surge just to get them in something that was not ucp. So obviously Krai made a boatload of money. That's a lot of shirts and pants. Things were looking really good for Karai. And then in 2014, the United States army finally announced their long awaited new camouflage. It looked a lot like multicam.

[Charles McFarlane]

So the army basically makes their knockoff Multicam pattern, which they call OCP, or Operational Camouflage Pattern, ocp.

[Avery Trufelman]

Not to be confused with the name of that old digital pattern that was UCP. This is OCP. And Charles McFarlane says OCP was a great way to get all the benefits of Multicam without having to pay a licensing fee to Cry Precision.

[Charles McFarlane]

It's basically Multicam without the branding, which.

[Avery Trufelman]

Pissed off Cry Precision.

[Greg Thompson]

Only after they had seen how well Multicam was working and decided they probably ought to do something like that.

[Avery Trufelman]

But when I talked to David Assetta at Natick, he offered up a different version of events. I have to ask about the relationship with multicam.

[David Assetta]

We worked with Multicam to develop a version of this original pattern. The original pattern was called Scorpion and it was developed here at Natick.

[Avery Trufelman]

Natick will tell you that both multicam and OCP share a common ancestor, a pattern called Scorpion.

[David Assetta]

Cry came in to work with us on Scorpion. You know, we did the research to figure out that that was the best pattern for the environments that we thought we might be having to send soldiers to at some point or another. The result was what they called Multicam and they trademarked as multicam.

[Avery Trufelman]

I reached back out to Greg Thompson at Cry Precision to ask about Scorpion and I got no reply. There are a few niche corners of the Internet that are still debating if Cry trademarked Natix Research or if Nat Dick stole Kry's trademarked. Pattern. Here's what I can discern. Yeah. This Pattern Scorpion is indeed the granddaddy of both OCP and multicam. Kry introduced this idea back when they were a little baby company being contracted by Natick. The Scorpion pattern was just one part of a whole bundle of ideas that Kry had proposed for a vision of what the soldier of the future would look like. Kry had always intended to patent multi environment camouflage and they did. So I can see how Kry feels completely screwed over. And I can also understand why the United States army wouldn't want to pay an expensive license fee to a private company that they feel they've already invested in. But it's really not for me to say. If the government has the right to claim ocp, the point is that they've claimed it. What matters is where we've ended up through this whole drama, which is that there is a very popular, very cool private pattern that's extremely easy to purchase and an official army camouflage pattern that look more or less identical. Tell if they're next to each other.

[Charles McFarlane]

That's about it.

[Avery Trufelman]

You kind of have to have them. Yeah, like touching. This is Nick Edler, the general manager at Eastern Costume in Los Angeles. They're a costume house that specializes in uniforms for war movies and police procedurals. Okay, there you go.

[Radiotopia Representative]

Multicam ocp.

[Avery Trufelman]

So OCP is browner? Yes.

[Radiotopia Representative]

There's more brown in it, there's more green in multicam.

[Avery Trufelman]

They are indeed nearly identical. And although Eastern Costume has almost every kind of regional camouflage from around the world, Nick says internationally most other armies tend to wear a version of OCP or multicam.

[Charles McFarlane]

A lot of other countries just wear our stuff.

[Avery Trufelman]

Oh God, don't get me started. Logan McGrath, the surplus seller, predicts that in 20 years, like every military, especially in Europe, is going to be wearing some version of multicam. All of the cool, unique stuff, like the French woodland, it's all going to be multicam of some type and it's going to get pretty boring. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that.

[Charles McFarlane]

There's a lot of multicam in Ukraine.

[Avery Trufelman]

Charles McFarlane says today soldiers fighting for both Russia and Ukraine wear multicam to the point where they have to wear colored armbands to tell who is on what side. The Taliban wear multicam.

[Charles McFarlane]

When Afghanistan was falling to the Taliban, a lot more images of Taliban soldiers were coming out for the first time. They all look like American special Forces. They all are copying that style. They're all wearing the multicam and they're wearing backwards baseball Hats. It almost looks like they should be, like, packing a lip, too. Like, it's just. It's so weird. Special Forces culture is cross culture in the way that, like, everybody is trying to emulate it, no matter what side.

[Avery Trufelman]

You can find multicam in a lot of places domestically, too. There were examples all over Eastern Costumes Warehouse. Nick had uniforms for police and FBI teams and U.S. marshals and Drug Enforcement and Border Patrol, all of whom have started wearing multicam. This is all SWAT teams.

[Charles McFarlane]

This is all Cry as well.

[Avery Trufelman]

It's like actually what SWAT teams were.

[Jasper Craven]

Yep.

[Avery Trufelman]

And it's basically the same structure as the military stuff. It's the exact same uniform, just in green. This is the LAPD one, and it's made by Cry. And it looks exactly the same.

[Jasper Craven]

Correct.

[Avery Trufelman]

In the lead up to Biden's inauguration, the national guard in D.C. announced that they would wear black vests over their camouflage so that you could tell them apart from local law enforcement, who were wearing nearly identical camouflage. And that was January 6th, when the Capitol was stormed by a bunch of extremist groups and militias, many of whom were wearing multicam. Everybody looked very similar. And every branch wears this now. Which?

[Charles McFarlane]

This one?

[Avery Trufelman]

MultiCam.

[David Assetta]

Yeah.

[Avery Trufelman]

Oh, my God. Yeah. Kai's killing it. During Black Lives Matter protests, federal agents were deployed to American cities wearing ocp looking exactly like police. Multicam. The public could not tell who were police and who were from the federal government. It's not good for our democracy, said David Lapan, a retired Marine colonel and former Department of Homeland Security spokesman. The public should not feel there's a militarized response to civil unrest. Cut to right now, and this is the reality in the United States as the National Guard is being brazenly marched into American cities where local police are openly cosplaying like Delta Force, and where, it turns out, a lot of military surplus ends up. American police can get military equipment from the Department of Defense entirely for free. They just have to pay for shipping. Well over 8,000 law enforcement agencies in 49 states and four U.S. territories participate in this program called the 1033 program, where they can get everything from office supplies to computers to vehicles to night vision to tactical gear to ammunition from the Pentagon. I mean, visually, these entities have become indistinguishable. MultiCam has gone through the whole trend cycle. It was niche, and now it's everywhere, which means it's inevitably getting a bit passe, certainly to the originators of the look, the Special Forces, who are moving on to the next thing. I don't know what that next thing is yet. I hear some special operators have switched back to classic 80s woodland camo. But whatever the special forces adopt moving forward, I'm sure I'll eventually see it trickle down into my local police. The military has trends just like the civilian world has trends. It's just that in the former, the stakes of these trends are much higher and they risk severing our trust in each other. But I'm not telling you to throw out camouflage or that you can't wear it. There's more to it. After the break, before there was scrolling through pictures, there were shop windows. That's really how everybody knew what the new merchandise was. And the big pioneer of the holiday window display was Macy's. Macy's has been transforming shopping into an experience much more than a transaction for over 167 years. They've always had the themselves apart by their curation and personalized guidance and their careful gift wrapping and their human touch. And they've been continuing their traditions like their store windows. Because gift giving can be magical. Shop@macy's.com or in store. It's almost 2026. Are you still paying your rent without Bilt? We can't have that. Come on. BILT is the loyalty program for renters. I. I hate paying rent, but Bilt makes it feel a little bit better. Let me explain. With Bilt, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, Lyft rides and so much more. Just link your credit cards, spend at your favorite local spots, earn BILT points on top of your regular credit card points and you get one step closer to that trip you've always wanted to take. You have to pay rent anyway. Paying rent is better with built earn rewards. And finally get something back for being a renter. Join the loyalty program for [e-mail] articles that's J-O-I N B I L T.com articles. Make sure to use my URL so they know I sent you joinbuilt.com articles. Did you know you can binge watch your way into deeper intimacy? The website is omg yes.com it has hundreds of short videos sharing new findings from the scientifically proven largest ever research study into sexual pleasure which was done in partnership with IU and Yale researchers. When you see evidence based, open, honest portrayals of what feels good and why, it totally takes the stigma out of sexual pleasure and it becomes obvious that this is just a part of life. On omg yes.com, real people share their Real life techniques. And it's all beautifully organized and presented with women of all ages, races, orientations, sharing their experiences with no blushing, no shame, no creepy feeling. Just enthusiasm and, and honesty that makes you want to learn more. It's a one time payment for permanent access forever. This is not a subscription. You basically pay one time and then you have this intimate treasure map that you can explore forever on your own or with a partner. So treat yourself or give it as a [e-mail] that's omgyes.com Sometimes when I am feeling bold, I wear my army pants around in Brooklyn and they get a ton of compliments. OCP might be passe in the military, but in my neighborhood, camouflage is cool. Ask a cool Brooklyn person like Tim Hotep aku.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

My name is Tim Hotep aku. I'm a writer, I'm a cultural worker, I'm an editor, and I'm a person who is from Brooklyn.

[Avery Trufelman]

As we were talking, Tim was wearing a camouflage patterned rain jacket.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

It is a Columbia jacket, it's kind of a duck camo. And I, I gravitated toward the camo because I'm a person who's been wearing camo for a long time because it's part of my like signature. Even amongst my friends, I like. Tim wears camo a lot. Right.

[Avery Trufelman]

So the question is, of course, why? I mean, I'm asking Tim, but I'm also asking myself and all the designers at Columbia and every other company who keeps putting camouflage on everything, even high.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

Fashion, has camo prints or expensive streetwear, has been doing it for a long time.

[Avery Trufelman]

Some of these streetwear brands are like scholars of camouflage.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

I think supreme literally just put out some new collaboration. Maharishi did it for a long time.

[Avery Trufelman]

Why could I not resist the urge to buy those army pants? Why do we, you and me, Tim, love this pattern so much.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

When people ask me about camo and why I like to wear it, I think my influences are Rastafarians from East New York. They wore camo, they wore a lot of army surplus stuff or street artists.

[Avery Trufelman]

Like in a photograph by Martha Cooper that Tim saw.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

And I think the photo was from like the early 80s and it depicted three graph writers on a subway car. Graph writers, graffiti writers. And one of them is wearing a pair of camo pants with tennis shoes. So like, for me, camo represents things that I really looked up to or was interested in as a child that I think were models of how to exist.

[Avery Trufelman]

And probably the most important models to Tim were the members of Boot Camp clique.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

Oh, boot camp clique. That was another major influence in terms of making camo something cool.

[Avery Trufelman]

A collective of rappers and producers in.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

Brooklyn, they didn't invent wearing camo, but they were the people who kind of made it. Their identity, part of their visual id, like camo is associated with ruggedness. It's associated with. With preparedness, with masculinity. Boot camp click as a coalescence of friends who all wrapped and produced and made songs together. Their approach to coming into music was like, we're almost like the military in that we have our stratification and our ranks and that we're disciplined in these ways. But it wasn't straight head to toe, like, we're dressing like soldiers everywhere.

[Avery Trufelman]

It wasn't that cosplay.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

It wasn't stolen version. And I think even in the boot camp clique, they make that clear. They're like, nah, we're our own kind of military entity. Their whole style was like mixing it up with different things. It'd be like big T shirts, it'd be streetwear, Rastafarian inspired stuff. You know, like everything that's fashion or expression or whatever is all about the context in which it exists and what people project onto the thing based on the perspective they come from. Hip hop is a composite culture. It's about mixing disparate elements, putting them together, and giving it your context that you put in it. And that's what I do fashion wise anyway. Like, for me, wearing camo means hip hop. Brooklyn, like Rostas, boot camp, click, all that. But if I'm in the Caribbean, Caribbean for my people in Brooklyn, certain islands, you cannot wear camo. And they will tell you, take that shit off. I went to Trinidad for carnival in like, maybe 0604 or whatever, and literally cast with. With fucking machine guns and roll up to you and be like, yo, you need to take those off. You need to change your pants. Because these are places that have had military coups.

[Avery Trufelman]

Well, I mean, we also live in a nation that had a coup, and I do. No, really, like, don't you think that that's changed the way that you see camos since January 6th?

[Tim Hotep Aku]

I mean, when I see a black person in camo, right, I think either military or a person wearing it for fashionable reasons or utility. When I see a white person in camo, I'm like, oh, militiamen. While camo might be a privilege for the civilian to wear, I also feel like it's free marketing for the military. America's very much into war, into militarism. I'm very critical of militarism, but at the same time I do have maybe a nostalgia that informs my aesthetic because I associate it with boot camp clique or the Rastas, who are like the coolest people in the world who look like something between a general and some Ethiopian sage.

[Avery Trufelman]

The military is still baked into all these cultural references, even if they've gone through a few layers of interpretation. And Tim knows this.

[Tim Hotep Aku]

I think being a person who examines their fundamental and foundational like beliefs about the world and themselves, you have to get to a point where you are accepting of the water you swim in. And I can talk about why I wear it and I can understand what I think I'm communicating when I wear it without being subsumed by meaning. And I think I can walk and chew gum when it comes to, you know, wearing camo. You know what I'm saying?

[Avery Trufelman]

Articles of interest is made by Avery Trufelman. My Super Story editor is Alison Barringer. Especially on this one. Sorry, this one was a lot of back and forth. Allison. This was also a lot for seasoned consultant costume historian Charles McFarlane. Thanks, Charles. The fact checker was Yasmin El Sayad. The music is by Ray Royal Lullatone and Sasami. The engineering and mastering was by Jocelyn Gonzalez and her team at prx. And a very special thanks this episode to the icon Amber Brookman, who was one of the first to help Cry Precision Print Multiple Multicam. She has an amazing personal story about finding her way from the world of high fashion modeling into the performance textile printing world. You can read all about it in her memoir, Nobody's Girl. Thanks so much, Amber. Also huge thanks to the journalism of Wesley Morgan who has written a lot about camouflage and his journalism was a big resource for me. Thanks as well to Maxwell Neely Cohen for pushing me in a lot of right directions. Thanks also to Hannah Cressy North. Thanks you also Drew Haupt. And thank you, dear listener. For images of what multicam and OCP look like next to each other, go to articlesofinterest. Substack. Com Radiotopia from prx.