East German Paratroop Officer Beret

If there was ever country who could manage to screw up designing a simple beret, it was East Germany. In NO period photos does it ever look normal... from the *two insignia patches sewn strangely far apart, to the very-difficult-to-form-into-anything-close-to-what-every-other-beret-ever-made-looks-lIke wool body, the NVA para beret is Communist engineering at it's finest. Having said all that, I cannot compliment Hessian Antiques enough on their outstanding (and faithfully accurate) reproduction of this rare item. Every aspect... the genuine leather headband, the particularly unique dark grey coloring, the grommet placement, and the detailed construction... are all superb! (I would greatly welcome an orange service dress version... which may have been sold at an earlier date, but is no longer in stock... into my DDR collection as well, should it ever be made available again) The price is surprisingly reasonable, considering the quality, and considering it's the only accurate reproduction anywhere on the market. The sizes are limited to Large and Hella-large at the moment (the exact opposite of most of the original NVA headgear for sale these days), but you can soak the entire beret in very hot water for a couple minutes, wring it out, and let it air-dry in the sun or a warm room, and it will shrink up to a full size. And you can do this w/o damaging the beret in the least; even the leather headband came out still-supple, not like beef jerky. My eternal gratitude to the good people at Hessian Antiques for the noteworthy amount of quality and attention to detail they invested to making this hard-to-find item available to the relatively small DDR-collecting community. Your valuable contribution to our hobby is immensely appreciated.