Camo: It’s not just about war anymore

When is camouflage – the fabric of duck hunting and military combat – cute and cuddly?

This spring, apparently.

Target is selling glow-in-the-dark camouflage curtains to “make dark rooms less scary for young ones.” Sears has a pink camouflage rocker for girls that’s “cozier than any foxhole” and a pastel comforter for “your powder puff private.”

Toddlers can wear the Gap’s authentic-looking surplus hat, and newborns have Babystyle camo in blue and pink.

“It was around but spotty,” Pam Klein of Parsons School of Design says of camouflage for young children. “Now it’s a trend.”

What the trend means is open to interpretation, with some fashion observers saying that camo-for-kids is a politically neutral outcome of the cycle of fashion, in which national chains often pick up styles a few seasons after high-end designers.

“(Camouflage) doesn’t have that association of war anymore,” says freelance style writer Tina Barry. “Now I think it’s just a pattern.”

Klein, the chair of Parsons’ associate degree program, disagrees, saying that kiddie camouflage makes a statement, one that is probably more likely to be embraced by Republicans and communities that are sending soldiers to Iraq.

When you wear camouflage, Klein says, “You identify with the military and strength on the one hand, and it also protects you. We’re living in some scary times, so maybe camouflage, unconsciously, makes children feel protected.”

Patricia Cunningham, a fashion historian at Ohio State University in Columbus, sees the possibility of a broader, non-military meaning in kiddie camo.

“Camouflage is meant to be protection, to begin with, so the enemy doesn’t see you. So who’s the enemy? Is there an enemy for these kids?”

Some observers trace kids’ camo to Sept. 11, 2001, when camouflage became an expression of patriotism for adults. High-end children’s clothing embraced the fabric in 2002, with designers using it to express a feeling “that we’re proud to be American,” Barry says. “It was everywhere” in designer kids’ clothes, she says.

In a cycle that’s fairly typical in fashion, mass-market stores like Sears took a few seasons to catch up, and that’s what Barry suspects we’re seeing now.

Some of the camouflage-friendly catalogs use military images and terminology, with Sears promoting one chair as “perfect for any GI Jane” and Company Kids photographing its camouflage bedding alongside toy fighter planes.

Target pairs its camouflage window treatment with its plush tank pillow – “squeeze to activate the sound of a tank firing.”

Officials at Target could not be reached for comment, Sears declined to comment and a spokeswoman for The Gap referred questions to the company’s Old Navy division.

Los Angeles-based Babystyle founder and CEO Laurie McCartney said in an e-mail, “Our children’s clothing styles are more sophisticated and (echo) what is happening in the adult market.”

Camo for kids has enjoyed at least one other spike in popularity.

In 1983, Pennsylvania surplus storeowners reported a run on uniforms for children, according to the Associated Press.

Among the explanations offered at the time: a terrorist attack that killed 241 U.S. servicemen in Beirut and the military pride inspired by the Reagan administration.

Today, Barry says, high-end designers for children are picking up a hippie vibe, with T-shirts that say “rebel” or sport peace signs, stars and the symbols for man and woman.

“After the (presidential) election, people kind of got charged up, and you’re seeing that in these littler lines where they don’t have to produce so far ahead … and I think that’s where you’re seeing a more Democratic-independent-left-leaning kind of message.”

So that’s what we’ll be seeing at Sears in a year or two?

“Probably. I wouldn’t doubt it. With all the political message leached out of it, of course.”