I am not sure why and I didn't know that this ever happened but I had one of these drop off a decayed skeleton in the east freeport newbie yard today. I have never seen this drop of a mob before. Only thing I can think of is maybe someone gave it to him. Then again it may just be a very rare drop also.
I don't know if a newbie could afford 2pp for something like that, casters have to save all the money for the spells.
It is also too heavy for a spellcaster, who have usually less STR. Better wait until you can kill giant spiders and make your raw silk armor, which is cheap and weight less.
I saw this on that gnome outside of West Freeport in the newby zone - it was so odd that I picked it up just on the off chance that it was useful. There's no noticable apperance change when my wood elf wears it, but she's already got hair - I'm going to give it to my troll to try - maybe I can have a troll with a technicolor mohawk. :)
Until someone finds a good use for this, I'd recomend against buying it - it ran me about 22 gold and for the extra 1 point of AC, costs 15 times more than a tattered helm and weighs atleast 5 times as much.
The point is casters can rarely get very good armor at low levels. If you can afford the weight, this is not a bad piece of armor, has 1 more AC than a raw silk headband. Not a bad piece of newbie armor. I've been trying to give my new enchanter a jump start, but there is little you can buy that casters can wear that isn't very expensive. Used my tailoring skill to give him a suit of raw silk, with this instead of a cap.