Fashion Army, ed. Matthieu Nicol

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by SPBH Editions (here) and MACK Books (here). Paperback with PVC jacket, 23 x 30 cm, 192 pages, with 339 color photographs. Includes essays by Angelo Flaccavento and Matthieu Nicol. Design by Brian Paul Lamotte. (Cover and spread shots below.)

Comments/Context: It’s hard to imagine two subjects with less in common than military equipment and haute couture. The former is predicated on bureaucratic function, the latter on decorative flourish. Mixing these apples and oranges feels incongruous, at least initially. But in the hands of the right curator, the nexus can prove surprisingly fruitful. This is the premise of Matthieu Nicol’s book Fashion Army, a book published in conjunction with an exhibition last summer at Les Rencontres d’Arles. Its title prefigures an Odd Couple mismatch, and the photos deliver. The result is a delightful and absurdist romp, with elements of Helmet Lang, Larry Sultan/Mike Mandel’s Evidence, and an old Sears catalog. 

Following in the vein of Sultan and Mandel, Nicol found his source material in old government photographs. In this case it was the archive of the Natick Soldier Systems Center (NSSC) in Natick, Massachusetts. This is a large R & D institution tasked with household soldier functions, including food, clothing, shelter, and more. Fortunately for Nicol, the U.S. military has a long memory and an excellent archiving system. Among its recently declassified files were 14,134 high resolution scans of various materiel from the early 1970s through the early 1990s. The photos were originally exposed as 4 x 5 color negatives, all neutrally staged with studio lighting against faintly hued backdrops. Nicol describes the work as “applied industrial photography, with no notion of authorship.”

The NSSC archive proved to be a gold mine for Nicol. The Paris-based collector is a voracious fan of found photography, and the director of a fittingly named consultancy called Too Many Pictures. The photos were right in his wheelhouse, but they came with no supporting material. There was no hint of previous publication or circulation, and the U.S. army did not answer any of his inquiries. Despite the blank slate—or maybe inspired by it?—Nicol persisted. In 2022, he edited a selection of food-related photos from the NSSC archive into the slyly satirical book Better Food For Our Fighting Men, published by RVB Books in Paris.

For Fashion Army, Nicol’s focus moves to troop apparel, with an aesthetic twist. “Since a scientific or historical approach to this archive would have been too approximate,” he explains, “the selection for this publication was based upon visual criteria.” Applying that criteria to army model(s) clothed in archaic gear prototypes, Nicol found countless gems. His book is stuffed like an image armory. Most pictures are enlarged to a full page, and some pages contain grids of smaller thumbnails. The paper stock is glossy and magazine thin, keeping the dense thicket of 300+ photos from feeling unwieldy. The non-professional models have blank or bemused expressions. Called into unexpected duty, their postures are stiff and perfunctory. Captions below the photos supply basic descriptions and dates, but there is no chronology to the sequence, nor any clear logic to the design objectives. Fashion Army mixes regular daily uniforms with specialized battle equipment, leisure wear, cold weather gear, undergarments, rain protection, and more. Judging by these garments, the army motto—This We’ll Defend—applies to fashion experiments as well as soldiers.

Browsing the assorted selection, the overall impression is of a well-funded institution with resources and staff to spare. If military brass wants a $10,000 hammer, it’s theirs. The same rules of procurement apply to tools for masking a crewman’s face under his helmet, injecting oxygen to the sternum, or linking carabiners to a parachute jumpsuit. NSSC engineers obliged. A man in a camouflaged “self-contained latrine” outfit from 1985 raises questions and eyebrows. How do the built in latex gloves and zip-lock fly satchel operate? The “New Thrust CP Ensemble” from 1984 is just as confounding, with at least five layerings topped by a see-through plastic 3/4 coverall. On a more reassuring note, the army seemed to have ear warming technology well in hand, as shown in a 1982 multi-paneled grid of several tufted hats, muffs, headbands, and earflaps. 

Some designs proved to be dead ends. Others endured into mass production. Both fates appear interchangeably in the book. Their offbeat stock nature is only enhanced by their age. Some of the photos stretch back a half century. Technology, materials, fabrics, and military objectives have shifted radically in the interim, not to mention hair styles and general fashion trends. Color negatives are just as archaic. The rear view microscope is not always kind. But if the vintage items in Fashion Army feel discordant—one wonders, who would wear this stuff?—at least they are in good company.

These odd design detours would be charming enough on their own, as they are in Better Food For Our Fighting Men. But Nicol took its successor a step further. Fashion Army ventures into absurdist territory—and claims its discordant namesake—with an essay by Angelo Flaccavento. An acclaimed fashion critic, Flaccavento analyzes the NSSC archive as a signature line of haute couture. He compiles a back-of-the envelope draft of “Show Notes” just as he would for any Paris premier of Ralph Lauren or Coco Chanel. “Emotionless, boxy tailoring brings a touch of formality and is completed with epaulettes and capes. High-waisted, wide-legged trousers become a decisive all-season statement,” he notes drily, while “the collection’s concise colour palette explores the full panoply of beige, khaki, olive drab, and white, with shots of navy blue and bright accents of orange and yellow.” This army gear might be galaxies removed from any Paris runway, but his deadpan tone reveals no hint.  

Flaccavento slots the old NSSC clothing pictures neatly into fashion history, alongside so called “arch-functionalists” like Kosuke Tsumura and Massimo Osti. Those two are noted as design compatriots, but the minimalism and high-tech materials of Helmut Lang get an even louder shout out. “The pictures on the front and back covers of this book do scream Helmut Lang,” writes Flaccavento. As a fashion novice, that claim is hard for me to analyze. But the outfits seem vaguely Paris-adjacent. Both photos show white utilitarian vests worn as outer garments, “nearly identical to those Lang presented in his shows around 1998.” One images they would fend off bullets as easily as prying critics.

Taking the satire a step further, Flaccavento argues that fashion designers could learn something from the blunt form-follows-function code of NSSC designers. Perhaps military discipline can counterbalance the current “fashion-scape prone to product placement rather than invention, with bland, poorly designed items devilishly marketed to bamboozled audiences intent on spending lavishly to show off.” Ouch. It seems something is rotten in the state of trademark. “Fashion needs a shake-up, but mere aesthetics are no longer enough,” writes Flaccavento. “Radical functionalism could be a way to produce new shapes and new directions.”

If not sure if Paris will be taking its cues from generals any time soon. But military designs have long disseminated through society at large, weaving through pop culture, high art, and basic supplies. Vehicles like the Jeep and Hummer have crossed over into mass production. The same is true of camouflage fabric, parachute pants, trench coats, Doc Martens, and Ray Bans, most of them shown here in various stages of prototype design. “What is initially rebellious becomes sedate and globally accepted sooner rather than later,” notes Flaccavento. “Even punk turned into a look.” Browsing Fashion Army, some army designs have undeniable aesthetic appeal, even if, to borrow Nicol’s words, they “generate a certain unease.”

The mix pleasure and discomfort energizes Fashion Army. The book gets even more enjoyable in its latter sections, distinguished by metallic paper and full-frame negative croppings. In what seems a direct homage to Evidence, Nicol branches away from model portraits to show an assortment of photos from experiments and tests, set against lab or environmental backdrops. One shows a woman fitting a mask to a subject in a patterned shirt. Another shows structure fire in a broad field. We see a man with his pants sagging, an infrared vegetation photo, and so on. 

Their original purpose is inscrutable, but that doesn’t diminish the entertainment value of these odd scenes. Nicol seems to be asking here, why stop at fashion? Why not poke fun at the whole enterprise? Indeed, why not? As Nikita Teryoshin recently demonstrated in Nothing Personal (reviewed here), and Joseph Heller and Stanley Kubrick well before him, military bureaucracy can be a source of black humor. The cleaner the description, the darker the satire. With a no-frills approach, Fashion Army takes direct aim at its titular subjects, and comes away with two direct hits. Paris could learn something from this book. So could the U.S. Army. 

Collector’s POV: Since the photographs in this photobook are all archival images, with no previous history in galleries or at auction, interested collectors should likely follow up with the artist/curator directly via his website (linked in the sidebar).

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