The hottest accessory of the summer (and possibly the year) arrived on Tuesday night with the first drop of merchandise for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, just hours after the Vice President announced the Minnesota governor as her running mate. Amid understated T-shirts and mugs in shades of navy blue and white in the official online shop was a bold offering: a $40, union-made woodsman camouflage cap with the campaign’s logo emblazoned in bright orange. The product description confidently declared it “the most iconic political hat in America,”a bold claim given how synonymous red MAGA hats have become with Donald Trump and his ideology.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]According to a statement from the Harris-Walz campaign, within 24 hours of the hat’s drop, the campaign not only sold out of their initial inventory, but also received thousands of pre-orders for the hat, to the tune of nearly $1 million. The distinctive cap went viral almost instantly online, where social media users were quick to point out the similarities between the Harris-Walz design and merch for Gen Z pop star Chappell Roan. Roan offers her own camouflage hat in a trucker style, embellished with the phrase “Midwest Princess.” The hat’s popularity and its association with Roan was seemingly sparked by a meme that compared the governor to the Missouri-born singer, an online moment that called to mind Harris’ meme-driven momentum this summer.
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Others online pointed to the camo hat striking a note with the zeitgeist. “This is the Bushwick x Los Feliz unity that our nation needs,” wrote media personality Desus Nice on X (formerly Twitter) about the hat, nodding to the current popularity of hunting and fishing hats—a sort of callback to the early aughts trend of trucker hats—being worn for street style as opposed to utility.
Despite the Roan comparisons (Walz’s fellow Midwesterner herself took to X to weigh in on the hats’ similarities, writing, “is this real,”) the Harris-Walz campaign, no stranger to a viral moment or a pop star co-sign, said in an email to TIME that the hat is an homage to the governor’s down-to-earth personal style. Walz, a former teacher, football coach, and an avid hunter, is often spotted wearing workwear basics like Carhartt, T-shirts, and a well-worn camouflage baseball cap, the latter of which he was wearing when he got the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate. And while the hat’s origin story is wholesomely compelling, its true allure lies with its diverse appeal to both outdoorsy middle-aged Midwestern dads and Gen Z fashionistas, a savvy move for a campaign that must speak to a broad swath of Americans in a very tight race.
For Kjerstin Haugsby, a 33-year-old architecture student and mother of two in Minneapolis, the charm of the hat lies within its Midwestern sensibility, which she sees as a metaphor for what Walz brings to the ticket.
“The camo hat is the most Minnesota thing,” Haugsby says, noting that she can’t wait to get one of her own. “We’re an outdoorsy group of people. It’s super unpretentious and it’s not some expensive brand name. I think it’s such a symbol of the Midwest and the blue-collar, middle-of-America, middle-of-the road people.”
Haugsby says that she thinks it’s “hilarious and wonderful” that the hats have become so popular nationwide, noting that while young people in coastal cities may be wearing the hat for a fashion trend, there are plenty of voters in older generations who may be wearing them in a more practical sense. On X, a user by the handle @benbo0526, wrote that he planned on wearing his Harris-Walz hat to the shooting range to show support for the ticket.
“As a white dude with guns and an F-150 I am actually buying this! & I will be going to the range with it and out and about like I do with my OWL hat. (Old White Liberal).”
And while camouflage print, long associated with guns and the military, has often been associated with conservative politics, the hat, like Walz, is a reminder of the value of nuance. Walz has referred to himself as “one of the best shots in Congress” and used to have an ‘A’ rating by the National Rifle Association (NRA). Now he’s a gun control advocate, whose liberal policies as governor and advocacy for gun control policies in the wake of the Parkland shooting in 2018 led the NRA to change their rating of him to an ‘F.’
“The country’s changed on this. We’ve changed. The situation has changed and I along with it as a leader,” Walz said in a 2018 interview with CBS Minnesota. “I’m a staunch supporter of Second Amendment rights to own firearms … But I also recognize the need to have some common-sense changes in this. I reject the notion that it’s one or the other. Those folks out there who are responsible gun owners―their hearts are breaking every time you see one of these shootings.”
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This kind of duality is why Nora Deely, a 22-year-old audio engineer living in Chicago, who recently purchased one of Roan’s trucker hats, thinks that the camo caps are such a hit. Roan’s outrageous sartorial sensibility, which has become a key aspect of her persona, owes as much to her small-town roots as it does to drag queens and glam punk. Her stylist, Genesis Webb, christened Roan’s style as “Midwest trashy glam.” While camo has seen highs and lows as a fashion trend over the years, there’s no doubt it slots right into this amalgam of influences.
“Sometimes when I see the camo, I think about people that might be more conservative,” Deely says, noting that as a fellow Midwesterner, she appreciates Roan using camo as part of her aesthetic. “So when I see queer artists like Chappell Roan, who’s from Missouri, or young people wearing camo, it feels like we’re reclaiming it.”
But for some, like Chris Mewes, a 38-year-old consultant from New York who plans to vote for Harris and who pre-ordered one of the Harris-Walz hats, it isn’t even that deep: “The camo just spoke to me.”
