The pattern on our duck camo hoodies and three of our trucker caps has a lot of names. Duck camo. Old school camo. Frogskin. Duck hunter camo. Blotch camo. They're all the same thing: a pattern of irregular rounded spots in three or four earth tones, no leaves, no bark, no photo-realism. It's the camo your grandfather wore, and it's the camo on half the hats in a Charleston parking lot right now. Here's where it came from.
1942: a garden editor and the Marine Corps
The pattern was designed in 1942 by Norvell Gillespie, a San Francisco horticulturist who was the garden editor for Better Homes and Gardens. The U.S. military wanted a printed camouflage for the Pacific, and Gillespie's design became the M1942 "frog skin" pattern: a five-color green side for jungle and a three-color brown side for beach, printed on reversible uniforms. The Marines wore it on Tarawa and Bougainville. The Army used it briefly in Europe and dropped it, partly because from a distance it looked too much like the German SS pattern.
How it became duck camo
After the war the surplus uniforms went home with the GIs, and a lot of those GIs hunted. The brown side of frogskin turned out to be about perfect for a marsh in December. Hunting-apparel companies noticed and started printing their own versions on canvas coats, hats, and shell vests. From the 1960s through the early 1990s that blotch pattern was simply what duck hunting clothes looked like. Nobody called it "duck camo" at the time; it was just camo.
Then the photo-realistic patterns arrived. Mossy Oak in 1986, Realtree in 1986, and by the mid-90s bark-and-leaf prints had taken over the hunting aisle. The old blotch pattern went to the back of the closet for twenty years.
Why it came back
Two reasons, and they're both honest. First, nostalgia. Mossy Oak's Will Dixon said it in an interview last year: "There is nothing more powerful than a drug called nostalgia." The people buying old school camo today are wearing what their dads and granddads wore in the pictures on the wall. Second, it just works off the water. Photo-realistic camo looks like hunting gear because it is hunting gear. Blotch camo looks like a pattern. It reads as a print the way a plaid or a stripe does, so it works on a hoodie you wear to breakfast, a cap you wear to the ballfield, and a tee you wear to work. That's the whole reason it crossed over into streetwear and heritage brands in the last decade.
Drake built a whole "Old School" line on it. Richardson prints it on the 112PFP in a dozen colorways. Independent Trading Co. runs it on heavyweight fleece. It's everywhere because it's good.
Our two versions
We use two takes on the pattern and they're deliberately not the same as anyone else's photo-real stuff.
On the hoodies, Independent Trading Co.'s Duck Camo (the classic brown, tan, and dark-olive blotch) and Desert Duck Camo (the same shapes in sand and khaki tones). Both are on Independent's 10 oz heavyweight fleece pullover, which is the hoodie we'd buy for ourselves. The Desert version is the one that surprises people; it's lighter and cleaner than you expect camo to be, and it's our best-looking piece in the sun.
On the caps, Richardson's Marsh Duck Camo on loden mesh, Bark Duck Camo on brown, and Riverstone Duck Camo on charcoal. Same family of blotch shapes, three different palettes, each on a five-panel front with the leather patch sitting on top.
A note on legality, because people ask
The 1942 frogskin design was a U.S. government pattern, so the original is public domain. The specific modern renditions from Richardson and Independent are their own artwork. We don't print camo ourselves. We buy the blanks with the pattern already on them from the companies that made them, which keeps us out of the lawyer business and keeps the pattern looking right. If you want to know how the photo-real patterns differ, read Bottomland vs Treestand.
The hoodies are here, $75, S through 3XL. The caps are here, $37. Preorder, first run ships in 6 to 8 weeks.