Personally, I find a lot of armour (early 16th century in particular) incredibly beautiful.
I kind of wondered whether this was a dumb thing to be inspired by, but the fact that so many actual artists are unable to replicate the forms even when they try makes me think that, yes, my admiration is probably warranted.

There's something about the marriage of form and function that most fantasy artists just don't get. They can't even tell what's wrong.