It is a little known fact that the 'Tank Top' was created by Kurt Tank (1898-1983), a man more famous for his role as a designer and test pilot of some of the most famous aircraft to have been produced by Focke-Wulf during the Second World War. As a young student he has been on the periphery of the Bauhaus movement and excited by their ideas he designed a collection to be shown in the 1929 Berlin fashion show. Most of his work was unremarkable but his reworking of the sleeveless knitted upper body garment had a very strong element of zeitgeist that it was reborn as an icon, much in the same way as Coco Channel's Brettons fisherman's jersey had been in Paris. Unfortunately the rise of fascism in Germany made it politically expedient for Kurt to drop his links with the Bauhaus and concentrate his abilities on more martial matters.
