Zey Do Nothing!

So I recently acquired a pair of goggles.  Why?  Because I liked how they looked.

They were sold to me as vintage aviator/motorist goggles.  I knew they weren't aviator ones, as they were just all wrong for that sort of thing.  However, motorist was still a possibility, given the wide range of styles that were made for that.

Anyways, I eventually typed the maker marks (stamped onto the side of the frames) into Google in order to see if I could at least date the things.  (As I wasn't convinced they were vintage either.)  I got a date alright, but it turns out they aren't motoring goggles either — they're snow goggles.  (Although I'm still not sure if they're vintage, for various reasons.)

If authentic, the model was manufactured from sometime in the 1930s until sometime in the 1950s, in either Italy or Switzerland.  (Only the city, Mendrisio, is marked, and there're apparently two of them.  One source claims it's the Italian one, but I have no confirmation on this.)  Although they were sold to the general public, they're best known for having been issued to Austrian and German troops around the time of World War II.  (In particular, the version with aluminium frames and dark greenish-yellow lenses was apparently common among the German alpine troops.)

Although they weren't strictly military goggles (and are apparently next to impossible to date, and therefore determine if they were likely used for military or private purposes), it's still a tad disturbing, to say the least.