Alexander McQueen for The Face Magazine (1998)
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Saman, 21
“I am wearing part of my full suit of armor. I wouldn’t say I have one specific aesthetic or style. What I put on typically has to do with my mood on any given day. I also think of looks/ideas and write them down to be executed. It doesn’t matter if I execute it the next day or 10 years from when I thought of it. I think we’re all avatars so I really am an advocate for experimenting with style and just being a fashion disruptor.”
Sep 21, 2023 ∙ Chelsea
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Fighting while looking Fabulous --- The War Hats of the 17th Century.
Say you're living in 17th century Europe, perhaps England in the midst of the English Civil War. You're a participant in the war but you're not just any ordinary soldier. No, you are a gentleman and perhaps a noble. Therefore you can't just wear any ordinary helmet on your noggin.
As a gentleman of noble birth you want to go into deadly combat looking fabulous, and you're not gonna just wear a pikeman's pot like those grass eating lower class infantry.
In the 17th century this was a real problem, or a least it was perceived as a real problem to upper class gentleman of the age. One certainly wanted some form of armor to protect the head, yet at the same time one wanted to wear a fine fashionable hat. Style should not have to give way to head protection. So what do?
One early solution was the secrete, which was essentially just a steel skullcap which the user could wear under a hat. However the secrete offered very little protection compared to a regular helmet.
The other option was to wear a helmet that looked like a hat. Throughout Europe in the 17th century armorers produced a number of special helmets and armored war hats that were made to look like fashionable hats commonly worn at the time.
They would commonly be blackened and often covered with cloth or felt so that they would appear to be a real hat, at least at a distance. Such war hats also would have special attachments with which the hat could be decorated with plumes of feathers, flowers, cockades, and other decorations.
While the armored war hat is mostly associated with the Royalist Cavaliers of the English Civil War, they were used all over Europe in the 17th century. They generally fell out of favor by the end of the 17th century when firearms came to completely dominate the battlefield.
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chainmail glove by jean paul gaultier
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