Quite a few designers and brands included in their Resort 2017 collections functional and practical gear. In most cases – such as Marisa Webb, Helmut Lang or Markus Lupfer's – the pockets, colour palette revolving around beige, khaki or olive green, and the shapes and silhouettes, betray a derivation from army uniforms. Yet it's easy to wonder why designers, rather than moving from mere uniforms, do not go back in time and maybe try and create something radically new moving from very different (or even obscure) army pieces.
An example? Check out the armour in this display from an exhibition about World War I uniforms (currently on at the Senigallia Rocca Roveresca Fortress in Italy). The display refers to a combat uniform from the Compagnia della morte ("Company of Death", 1915-18).
The soldiers in these battalions were engineers and sappers and their job was cutting out the barbed wire constructed to protect the enemy trenches. These missions were extremely dangerous, so the soldiers earned their battalion the title of "Company of Death", as quite often they would die in action.
The soldiers would wear heavy and uncomfortable equipment that made movement difficult and slow and that mainly comprised the "Farina" armour and helmet, named after the name of their designer, Milanese engineer Ferruccio Farina, and also carried a pair of special pliers to cut the wire.
The armour weighted around 9 Kg and its shape was interesting since it featured a trapezoidal plastron made with 5 layers of steel anchored with metal latches to the shoulder pieces. The armour featured on its internal side two "fabric handles" so that it could have been used as a shield.
The Farina company was specialised in articulated pieces and had actually manufactured another armour that had an armadillo-like configuration and that was privately sold to sodiers (the "Corsi" armour). The Farina armours didn't manage to protect the soldiers who used them as they were too heavy and only protected the upper part of the body from one type of bullet shot at a specific distance. Yet their shape, configuration and articulated bits and pieces may provide interesting inspirations for fashion designers keen on reworking the military theme from a more original point of view.
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