I bought the new types of armour from big al's and when I purchased them there was an option to equip them straight away. I did this but it made the new item(gloves) replace my previous only piece of armour(flexible), in the regular armour slot. I replicated it by doing the same thing again with boots and helmetand it seems any head/leg/feet armour equipped from the purchase screen adds the armour to your main armour slot.
I fixed the issue by un-equipping everything and re-equipping from the item screen.
Basically if you equip any type of armour from the purchase screen the game seems to treat it like body armour. Its a small bug but it will hurt anyone who goes messing with the new items and then goes into an attack without checking their inventory.