Faced with many woven wonders destined for the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum "Extreme Textiles" show, we singled out Palmhive's Bobble for our third materials invitational-precisely because it blends in so well. Developed in the early 1990s for the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense, the rubbery, warp-knitted polyester-and-Lycra material was originally used to camouflage tanks. More recently, the open-tooth weave has appeared in a prototype for a sniper suit. Though it lacks the most effective component of typical camo, a variegated pattern, the material's bubbly texture-it looks like it might have been molded on molten lava-is difficult for radar systems to pick up.
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