Ekfud
New Member
So this is something of a sanity check rather than a sourcing question... but bear with me - keen to see if anyone has gone through a similar research process with German uniforms. I've had a fairly keen interest in Where Eagles Dare since I was about 10, and I'm finally getting a chance to source a few movie prop replicas as I get a bit older. The german rank insignias and awards always had some fascination, and I wanted to go about putting together a Schmidt uniform. Yes, it's maybe not a great option to wear walking down the street, but more as part of home collection.
Having done plenty of background digging around on the setup, it's clear the main characters are sneaking in as alpine (mountain) officers, complete with edelweiss badges and lime green uniform piping. Basically all of the pieces, insignia, tunics, caps are available online these days (which is amazing...), but the bit that has me quite stuck is trying to work out which material they used for filming. The uniforms were historically largely made in either wool or gaberdine - and I cannot for the life of me tell what was used in the film.
So... wool uniforms would probably make more sense for hanging around in -10 deg conditions... and the colour of a wool tunic just about lines up.
Blue-green with a slightly mottled wool finish.
Until... it doesn't. Then we jump to a few scenes where we have a much darker grey uniform.
Which looks much more like the gaberdine - on closer inspection, it even looks like it has the gab 'ridges' in the fabric.
It might just be all sorts of colour correction on a 60 year old movie -
I've got a sneaking suspicion that they filmed all the alpine/outdoors stuff in wool, then for soundstage/indoor filming quietly swapped the uniforms for gaberdine.
It would 100% make sense for them to have gone with the lighter weight uniforms for filming 'warmer' conditions - even though for the sake of the movie, they are supposed to be in the exact same outfit for the duration.
Is anyone with a bit more depth of understanding of uniforms from the period able to make a definitive call?
Having done plenty of background digging around on the setup, it's clear the main characters are sneaking in as alpine (mountain) officers, complete with edelweiss badges and lime green uniform piping. Basically all of the pieces, insignia, tunics, caps are available online these days (which is amazing...), but the bit that has me quite stuck is trying to work out which material they used for filming. The uniforms were historically largely made in either wool or gaberdine - and I cannot for the life of me tell what was used in the film.
So... wool uniforms would probably make more sense for hanging around in -10 deg conditions... and the colour of a wool tunic just about lines up.
Blue-green with a slightly mottled wool finish.
Until... it doesn't. Then we jump to a few scenes where we have a much darker grey uniform.
Which looks much more like the gaberdine - on closer inspection, it even looks like it has the gab 'ridges' in the fabric.
It might just be all sorts of colour correction on a 60 year old movie -
I've got a sneaking suspicion that they filmed all the alpine/outdoors stuff in wool, then for soundstage/indoor filming quietly swapped the uniforms for gaberdine.
It would 100% make sense for them to have gone with the lighter weight uniforms for filming 'warmer' conditions - even though for the sake of the movie, they are supposed to be in the exact same outfit for the duration.
Is anyone with a bit more depth of understanding of uniforms from the period able to make a definitive call?