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.
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.