Interesting article over on TwistedSifter about the use of so-called “dazzle” or “razzle-dazzle” camouflage beginning during WWI. (The Wikipedia article is pretty good, too.) It’s a kind of practical op-art: The idea was not so much to make the ship invisible against the background, but to confuse enemy weapons operators as to its distance and heading. The Rhode Island School of Design has a wonderful online collection of various paper plans for dazzle camouflage schemes donated by Maurice L. Freedman, who was district camoufleur for the 4th district of the U.S. Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation, and would go on to invent the board game “Battleship.” [via Dude Craft]
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Be sure to check out this article on aircraft dazzle camouflage by artist McClelland Barclay:
http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/artist/b/barclay/barclay%201.html
Some of those designs would make good clothing designs.
Also cool is the story of the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen, a Netherlands minesweeper that escaped the Japanese invasion of Java after the crew disguised it as a tropic island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNLMS_Abraham_Crijnssen
http://www.hnsa.org/ships/img/crijnssen3.jpg