Fashion Army - An Interview with Matthieu Nicol
Exploring Military Influence on Outdoor Gear + some other oddities from the archive :)
Interview
The Outdoor Recreation Archive sat down with visual researcher Matthieu Nicol to discuss his latest book, Fashion Army, which explores how military design has influenced outdoor gear, high fashion, and everyday wear.
In a world flooded with data, and social media feeds recycling imagery and content, Nicol specializes in pouring over large quantities of material (14k images for Fashion Army), squirreled away in government or university databases and archives until he finds a “corpus” that captures his attention. That’s exactly how he found material for his first book, Better Food for our Fighting Men, and his most recent book, Fashion Army, courtesy of recently declassified imagery from the Natick Soldier Center.
🔎 Key Takeaways:
Nicol’s intention behind the project was to show how fashion and military equipment have intersected and influenced one another throughout time from the design of the clothing, to the use of models, to staging and production.
While the imagery is shot as if for a catalog or fashion campaign, the intention of the imagery was for internal use and to communicate the function of military clothing and equipment.
As a visual researcher, Nicol spends countless hours going through databases of material and avoids the economy of recycled content on social media. He finds truly unique imagery that in most cases hasn’t been seen online before.
Listen to the full interview on the History of Gear | Highlander Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your podcast player of choice.
Enjoy some of our favorites from the book below. :)
Check out Nicol’s work on his personal Instagram and his vintage food account.
More on Military + Outdoor
Friend of the archive, Dr. Rachel Gross, wrote a piece for the Atlantic on the interactions between the military and the outdoor industry, and how the concept of layering clothing came out of those conversations.
Oddities + Sidequests
In the process of spending time in the archive, there are always interesting things to look at and stories to tell. Here are a few things that caught our attention.
A fan of the archive reached out and asked us to find a photo of her mother that appeared in a Patagonia catalog. We found it, plus we got the backstory of the photoshoot and of the dutch oven cake!
If you haven’t heard, we have a book coming out in late Spring / early Summer with Thames & Hudson! It’s been 3 years in the making and we can’t wait for you to see it. Details on how to get your copy below:
Special Edition: https://vol.co/products/outdoor-archive
Standard Edition - USA Pre-Order: https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-outdoor-archive-the-ultimate-collection-of-adventure-and-sporting-graphics-illustrations-and-gear-hardcover
Standard Edition - Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Outdoor-Archive-Collection-Adventure-Illustrations/dp/0500025991
Standard Edition - Canada: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/798392/the-outdoor-archive-by-chase-anderson/9780500025994
Patagonia imagery in the late 80s and 90s is fascinating. Photoshoots didn’t feel overly staged and from as far as we can tell, include real people living their lives. It’s interesting to see the range of activities represented from running cattle, track and field, working a fishing boat, to kayaking and climbing.
Up Next?
We are going to be exploring Snow Lion and the influence of outdoor executive, Bill Simon, on the outdoor industry. If you have any stories about Snow Lion, or you just want to admire this incredible Snow Lion 1978 cover, painted by Bruce Wolfe, please send us your fan mail. We love Snow Lion.
