Camo outerwear

[barnabus]

I've long found a genuine amusement in how something designed originally to prevent the wearer from being seen has evolved into a fashion item that is intended to be seen. Camo isn't something that has ever featured heavily in my wardrobe. As a kid about the age of six around 1982, I was gagging for a camo jacket, but was never allowed one for obvious reasons, growing p in the north of Ireland in an era when everyone was six degrees of separation from a story about a kid being mistaken for a target and shot. (One case I particularly recall was a kid in Derry who was hit when a squaddie just saw a silhouette in the sun; kid had a cut-out wooden ***** with a length of copper pipe for a barrel that also glinted in the light and looked like the real thing.) Understandable my parents were wary of that sort of thing back in the day. When I was around nineteen, I bought a NATO desert-camo jacket that would have been surplus from circa Desert Storm. Didn't wear it much - brown wasn't a big part of my wardrobe at the time. Overdyed it blue early on, and that got worn quite a lot. Some years later I bought a short-sleeved shacket sort of thing in a green camo in a vintage store in Copenhagen. This would have been 2001, on a work trip. I wore it a bit, had a sort of Fidel Castro vibe to it, but it was never really me. The only camo thing I've worn in the last twenty-five odd years is a Bronson Daisy May I picked up about three years ago. I can't really see me wearing much else; I did once buy a Heer camo Panzerwrap, but never wore it outside the house. There are some pre-1945 camos I can see wearing as a jacket liner now, but otherwise it's not really me. Some camos I wouldn't be comfortable wearing because of very specific associations, but otherwise purely an aesthetic choice.

Funny how camo has so much cultural baggage. Moreso than other styles or fabrics we enjoy on here.

Forex, no one wearing a double rider would fear a derisive "where's your bike?" comment from anyone other than those of feeblest imagination.

Just as with anything in our post-modern jumble of a culture, clothes are just clothes, and I'm getting closer to be comfortable with that for my woodland.

I wore it again this morning, heading off to help with a house clearance. It feels like an honest piece of utility wear - more than an expensive repro that encourages babying I think.

Feel free to disregard this while post btw, it's just my half-formed thoughts falling out.