The invention relates to a ballistic vest containing a stock of flexible fabrics and a stack of flexible unidirectional layers, in which the fabrics contain strong fibres of a first kind, the unidirectional layers contain strong fibres of a second kind, and in which the fibres in a unidirectional layer run essentially parallel and are disposed at an angle to fibres in an adjacent layer which is greater than 0 degrees, where in that the flexible fabric is a loose fabric and is located on the strike side of the vest.The percentages by weight of the loose fabrics and the stack of UD layers preferably is between 15:85 and 30:70%. In that case, a vest of areal density less than 6 kg/m.sup.2 can have such ballistic resistance as to stop an Action 3 bullet with a velocity of up to 437 m/s with a trauma to NIJ Standard of less than 44 mm.