It used to be that politics bubbled up through fashion in the form of subcultural rebellion. Cintra Wilson, one of my all-time favourite writers, explains on her Substack how the fashioning of the self was “your anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-materialism, anti-racist, anti-sexist-battle flag.” Up until the 1990s, fashion was an accessible tool for political dissent, for dressing outside of the norm and provoking those within it. Cintra notes the impressive speed with which the American grunge scene morphed into Heroin Chic and was pushed down the catwalk for Perry Ellis (reissued in 2018 for those who were too embryonic to buy it the first time around). Boring technological realities which hastened production processes and shipping logistics, as well as the expansion of the fast fashion business model, further worked to empty fashion of its political power in the Global North through replication and commodification. That is, until we entered the age of the meme.
Left: The Perry Ellis Spring 1993 Ready-to-Wear collection colloquially termed the ‘grunge collection’ designed by Marc Jacobs in its original runway presentation. Right: Lady Gaga wears the re-issued style for the November 2018 ELLE Magazine cover.
Meme logic dictates that a symbol (generally with a visual element) must have viral potential, cultural salience, and be recognisable. However, the curious quality of the meme is that its symbolism is just malleable enough to be readapted and reforged in new contexts and spaces over time. Fashion offers obvious templates which rely on signature design elements that anchor a visual sign to a “brand” “era” “trend” or (as Gen-Z would say) “aesthetic” but which can also be tweaked and played with ad infinitum. Memeable fashion employs digital practices of display (self-recorded and otherwise) to create real political momentum. Leigh Patterson first wrote about this in relation to the political slogan tee as a form of embodied, mobile meme back in 2017 in a brief but excellent article that is well worth reading.
The meme age has re-imbued fashion with its political potential, this time not as a counter-cultural intervention, but as a mechanism for building, maintaining and growing the influence of a political brand. Fashion is more often used now to outwardly display our mainstream political commitments, aligning us to a group, than question the system. This meme-logic even extends beyond garments into the physical arena of fashion retail. For example, in one of 2024’s more questionable visual merchandising choices (of which there were a few), even the affectation of Trump’s “dad-dancing” was mimicked in premium basics brand Aritzia’s window displays.
Before I get stuck into our case study, I should mention that this article came out of some initial research I did prior to speaking with talented fashion journalist Isabel Slone. She wrote a brilliant piece for The Guardian about hunting camouflage in fashion and kindly quoted me – the piece provides some useful context to the following discussion.
I suggest that by looking at political merchandising strategies, we can better understand how fashion is being used to build political brands in the meme age. The viral Harris-Walz cap is an excellent starting point for exploring this idea.
Dual Readings: Sincere Integration or Ironic Appropriation
Political fashion becomes meme-worthy firstly through its conscious embrace of multiple readings where symbolic flexibility is seen as a strength rather than problem. The Harris-Walz cap used the ambiguous metaphorical potential of hunting camouflage as its main visual marker. The print can be interpreted in two ways: in an ironic reading, the reappropriation of a print generally associated with the gun-loving republications or as a sincere attempt to integrate the motifs of a community the democratic camp would tend to alienate. This dualism is best captured by a meme circulating on X: “Bass pro shops in a republican way or in an Ethel Cain way?”
The official Harris-Walz cap design.
Although I still think the liberal establishment has failed to recognize how unproductive their consistent Othering actually is, Tim Walz’s undeniable early resonance with young men and perceived authenticity make that second genuine reading feel more believable. Add to that his veteran status and his outdoorsy, practical Midwestern wardrobe and the camo-print baseball cap seems to be an obvious merchandising choice with legitimate alignment to his brand. The cap aims to speak to the hipster contingent and the actual bearded woodsmen they pinched their flannels and Carhartt from in the first place. As Vogue contributor Jose Criales-Unzueta notes with more than a hint of glee “Fashion-inclined gays and queers in Brooklyn and middle-aged Midwestern dads are, as it happens, not entirely dissimilar aesthetically. The only differentiating factor is a tinge of sartorial irony.”
If we choose to interpret the hat as a sincere move to align with rural communities positioned between the typically liberal and economically privileged concentrations of the east and west coasts, we can understand it as a move to build solidarity. There is also a return to traditional Americana (often portrayed as intrinsically at-odds with the liberal ethos) implicit in the use not just of the camouflage print, but of the baseball cap as a garment itself. The baseball cap’s significance has been analysed by William Kelly in detail, who explains “its popularity is a confluence of that sport’s own history, the political economy of branding and licensing” and it’s design properties. Or, as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune suggested, it is the only garment capable of uniting “Filipino police officers, UN weapons inspectors and Australian teenagers.” They are, put simply, “Americana gone global.”
Instagram page @nolitadirtbag’s meme frames the Harris-Walz cap as an ironic choice for New Yorkers participating in what they call ‘rural cosplay’
If, alternatively, we understand the cap design as subverting the hunting camouflage, as a cynical recasting of the motif that empties it of its prior associations and history then its adoption by the “liberal elite” is a clear provocation. In this view, Kamala HQ extends its memetic sphere of influence and hijacks the print for its own viral purposes. Republican motifs are no longer seen as undesirable or untouchable, as they were framed during Clinton’s campaign but ripe for repurposing. Whilst Clinton’s logo designer called the Trump campaign’s aesthetic sensibilities “terrible”, Harris’ team recognized the power hunting camouflage possessed because of its right-wing associations. The cap’s similarity to bisexual pop-star Chappell Roan’s tour merchandise was immediately noted online, contributing to its viral sell-out reception. This had a further layer of irony, as Roan herself refused to officially endorse the democrats because of their stance (and silence) on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
There’s no definitive way of knowing whether the design is to be taken at face value or if it represents ‘insincerity’s final frontier’ and that’s exactly the point. Patronizing ‘rural cosplay’ or subtle gesture of solidarity – it doesn’t matter. In the meme age, making people talk is the only end-goal. The cap’s popularity and meming from all sides accelerated the Kamala-Walz campaign’s summer months.
Hunting Camouflage, Survivalism and Streetwear
If the ambiguity of fashion allows for it to be read in different ways and therefore to be used and memed by multiple different communities, then it is a symbolic anchor that offers it the consistency it needs to remain recognizably tied to its core ideas. In the case of the Harris-Walz cap, the print chosen expands on a long history and culture of hunting and survivalism that has more recently been used by streetwear fashion brands.
Although camouflage was ubiquitous on the catwalks during the mid-aughts (no coincidence given the height of the Global War on Terror’s terrifying need to militarize all culture in its wake), its recent revival is closely tied to the rise of streetwear. It first re-emerged around the late 2010s in streetwear fashion brands like A Bathing Ape, Palace and Off-White which specialize in menswear and baggy pieces, often worn as gender-neutral. It has been subverted further by TikTok-led trends that fuse the ultra-masculine and feminine. Coquette-core which embraces baby pink ribbons, ruffles and Lolita-inspired frothiness has a niche that merges hunting camouflage with these flourishes. Blokette (discussed by some of my favourite cultural commentators, Nymphet Alumni here) is a more utilitarian fusion of coquette and ‘blokecore’ that pairs utilitarian garments such as cargo trousers with football jerseys, oversized hoodies and Timberland boots. Gorpcore, a style that elevates outerwear into the high-fashion realm with avant-garde silhouettes and innovative fabrics, also uses hunting camouflage to embody a spirit of exploration and risk-taking for the professional managerial class.
Camo-coquette tote bag design by VogueOfTheVoid on Etsy
The hunting camouflage of the hat most closely resembles a print commercialized by an outerwear and hunting brand called Mossy Oak. The pattern is called “Break Up Country” – a somewhat unfortunate coincidence given the national polarization US elections catalyze. Hunting represents self-sufficiency in much of rural America, a status that has gained ground in the popular conscience since the pandemic. “Break Up Country” also has a rather unexpected role in environmental conservation – it is the official camouflage of the Quality Deer Management Association of America which deals with controlling deer population numbers across national parks and rural areas. This is a subtle, and perhaps unintentional, nod to environmental considerations (as inhumane as some of those interventions may be).
The pattern remains the best-selling print for hunting clothes. The copy from the Mossy Oak website has an almost violent description of the camouflage’s efficacy – “Break up country annihilates your outline and fuses you with the terrain like no other pattern that has come before it.” Annihilation of the self runs counter to the typical purpose of fashion: Western culture generally suggests that clothing is to empower and define the self. For political fashion in the meme-age, the opposite is true. This fashion is a tool of collectivization.
Having been distanced from its primarily military connotations through a steady process of commercialisation since the 1990s, camouflage print is still a visual marker for the survivalist community. Survivalists, sometimes referred to as “preppers”, are a community organized around the process of preparing for a range of worst-case scenarios; from pandemics to food scarcity, to all-out civil and/or nuclear war. Camouflage carries with it a sense of “apocalypse chic” diametrically opposed to the fussiness of most high fashion. This “dystopian mood” maintains an air of straightforwardness, of getting things done. We could see this as a shorthand for stripping leftwing American politics back to its original concerns of maintaining and building public infrastructure, providing welfare and ensuring economic needs are met across class strata. “Forget the culture wars, their confusing jargon, and theoretical machinations”, the print says, “I’m just here to make sure everyone is safe.”
Manufacturing Viral Merchandising
Political fashion must go viral and become a meme to be effective in generating conversation and, eventually, votes. Not all political merchandise has achieved this. For example, the virally noteworthy Harris-Walz cap is back-to-basics incarnate, a strategy quite different to that of Biden’s merchandise from the previous year. The Biden-Harris campaign in 2020 consciously used motifs previously associated with progressive movements. The tie-dye print is still associated with 1960s Hippie counterculture that had an almost spiritual, as well as political, dimension and the choice of garments such as hoodies on offer appeal specifically to a younger, urban demographic with an interest in hip-hop culture. Biden’s merchandise failed to hit the viral mark, perhaps because it was already speaking the visual language of city dwelling voters and therefore missing an opportunity to do something discourse-worthy. It almost feels like a painful attempt to “hello fellow youth” itself into internet-culture – the death knell of most management-approved, pre-seeded memes.
Unfortunately, the far-right understands much better that manufactured virality can only work when the players are already embedded within these niche online spaces and fluent in the insider lexicon. To that end, Elon Musks’ self-appointment as “Dark Maga” came with its own fashion statement: the gothic MAGA hat. Mimi Mihailescu describes the “Dark Maga” memetic language “frequently depict[ing] Musk as a hero in dystopian, combative imagery” as he “fights” for free speech against the (quite literally) satanic liberal establishment. The black colour here becomes symbolic of the intensified authoritarian and outwardly hostile political attitude associated with the alt-right.
The ‘Dark Maga’ hat with gothic script
Interestingly, Trump also sold a camouflage print hat as part of his election merchandise spread. But perhaps because of the viral success of the original bright red MAGA hat, an unapologetic colour that creates remarkable spectacles of group dress at his rallies, it did not garner the same attention as the democratic alternative. The official Trump baseball cap uses military, as opposed to hunting, camouflage. As of today, it is still available for purchase on his website – although a disclaimer reads “Due to high demand by President Trump’s amazing supporters, shipping could be delayed.” There is probably an equal amount to say about Trump’s choice of army camouflage and familiar orange lettering… but that may be my next article to write.
The Harris-Walz campaign might have ultimately failed to secure the presidency, but the impact of the camo cap demonstrates an awareness of how politics works in the image-led meme age. This improved literacy could serve the democrats (and liberalism at large) well in the coming years, but we must not forget that fashion is just as available as a powerful visual tool to the far and alt-right. As my good friend and scholar Inés Bolaños Somoano reminds us, above all, “the right-leaning be memeing.”
References
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