Vest : Turkish Army

Quilted cotton vest of printed brown plain weave fabric. The pattern of the fabric is of checkered hexagons in two shades of brown and fawn on a fawn background with fine, horizontal, light and dark brown stripes. The vest is lined with a darker brown twill and quilted to the outside fabric with vertical lines of stitching in blue/grey thread through light wadding. The neck edge is bound with a different plain weave fabric of geometrical and organic shapes printed in brown and pink on a fawn ground. A tape tie of the same fabric has been sewn to each front, just above the waist. At the neck edge, right front is a single white celluloid button with corresponding buttonhole at the left edge. Back of vest has a centre back seam. All seams are crudely machine sewn.

This vest was collected during operations in Palestine, possibly from a Turkish prisoner of war, and brought back by the Australian War Records Section around 1919. Although not an issue item, the vest is part of a complete example of a uniform that was acquired to represent the typically poor quality of uniforms issued to the ordinary Ottoman soldier. Soldiers' wives, mothers and sisters often made and provided additional vests for warmth as the relatively open weave of fabric in the actual uniform provided little protection from the weather.