While our friends at kommadostore.com have been busy in the warehouse doing a bit of spring cleaning, how about something really special this weekend?In their back pocket, they’ve been having a chat with their Gorka-making friends in Uzbekistanand they’re once again expanding the Slav tracksuit extended cinematic universe. The camo is called “Kamysh” kamush? kamiish?, and its art. They heard that YOU LIKE STRIPES…So they put stripes on your stripes. For the uninitiated, this tracksuit features a faithfully rendered version of a real camouflage that Russia used on a militarized police force for decades.The blue tiger striped camo “Kamysh” became as infamous as it was eye-catching, so they figured why not take this work of madness and give it the full slav tracksuit treatment? But the tracksuit is as much of a work of art as the camo itself —It’s got all the features you’d expect in a premium pairing with sewn-on instead of printed stripes, zipped pockets, ultra-cozy fabric, and a “goldilocks” athletic fit you’ll love. As expected, the same people who made the Gorkas absolutely nailed it. Current ETA is mid-June.
For more about what is undoubtedly the most insane camouflage ever sold surplus or not, keep on scrolling for the scoop… Not that long ago- It was the post-soviet-union collapse. Russia couldn’t make up their mind, so they finally lost it instead. The camo-of-the-week for Russia’s primary military force was “VSR”, a vertical-dominant pattern. But there was a horizontal pattern that also started to see use around the same time in the mid 90s, Tiger Stripe. It’s obviously different to US tiger stripe from Vietnam but it was deployed for the same reasons. In built up tall grass, marshlands, and water-adjacent flora, it excels. But hold on, how the heck did it turn blue? It’s obviously different to US tiger stripe from Vietnam but it was deployed for the same reasons. In built up tall grass, marshlands, and water-adjacent flora, it excels.But hold on, how the heck did it turn blue? ? Kamysh is actually a bit of a blanket term for ALL tiger stripe camos from Russia, its sometimes just called “Tigr” too. With increasing police presence during former-soviet-state separatist conflicts, Russia’s ‘MVD’ came into play, but there was a problem — they didn’t want to make it look like their internal security forces were literally the military. Normal VSR was a no-go because then it’d look like Russia’s primary military. Then they had a crazy idea: Give different police/emergency response units a different shade of the camo to soothe any accusations of paramilitary activity. Blue tiger striped camo would be given to “OMON”, a top mobile police unit in the MVD. Curiously, they’d even adopt the Siberian tiger as a mascot on some of their unit patches.What exactly does OMON do? Think of them like the US’s militarized federal police forces for the FBI, DEA, Homeland Security, and everyone’s favorite, the IRS. Except Russia liked to use them outside the country quite a bit, too. They were seen in many armed conflicts. So for decades the MVD and it’s definitely-not-military units would show up to the function wearing knockoffs of DPM, M81, Flecktarn, or this crazy tiger stripe all to not raise too much suspicion that they were militarized forces of the Kremlin… Yeah… A litany of blue-ish tigerstripe-ish commercial camos would become the face of OMON for decades. Infamously, a suspiciously similar blue tiger stripe was also used by “Berkut” units during the “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine c.2014. Was it a true “Urban camo”? or just an identifying mark of the unit? Does Russia know “OMON” in Cyrillic is “HOMO” backwards? It seems like it’s anyone’s best guess. And we couldn’t neglect to mention what made this camo popular to us gun-toting autists in the west. At MilSim West, an iconic photo of a man performing a flying kick into a door wearing what appears to be genuine “OMON” garb was taken.It was only in recent years that people actually figured out it wasn’t really OMON doing that, which just goes to show you how crazy that police unit is. It made that camo go “viral” amongst the surplus-sphere, and with the state of Russian unobtanium, we decided to take a new spin on it by making a brand-new garment out of a pre-existing camo. It was only fitting that kommando approached their gorka-maker to bring back this piece of Russian obscura — and they did a fantastic job to boot.. MVD! OPEN UP! 🚓 |
