“I have said it before that I think astronauts are bigger prima donnas than supermodels,” Southern joked. At the end of the day, there are lives on the line, and the pressure is palpable. Used to pressure - Southern once watched a pair of his angel wings fail from backstage while standing next to Jay-Z - these designs aren’t donned by top models strutting to the end of a runway. “Space suits are considered weapons by the Department of State, and so working internationally created all kinds of issues.”Īnd so comes the weight of the work that Southern and Moiseev have their hands in on a daily basis. “To go into government contracting and aerospace engineering was like hitting a wall - but a very rewarding and productive one. “It was a massive change from my life as a freelance costumer,” Southern said. The two continued working together until making it official and starting Final Frontier Design in 2011. and Houston to tout their tech and take it to the next level.
#Secret of the wings costume plus#
This time, they won $100,000 in prize money - plus invitations to D.C. “It was exhilarating and exciting, and I said goodbye to him at JFK, and I thought that was it.” What Southern didn’t yet know is that he and Moiseev would return to the competition in 2009 for another glove challenge. “I had a heart to heart with this Russian space suit engineer who I thought I’d never meet again,” Southern said. Though he didn’t place in the challenge, Southern says that this is “where the story really starts.” Another competitor by the name of Nikolay Moiseev needed a ride back to the city when the competition wrapped - and Southern had a car. “It just seemed like the perfect conceit for my thesis show.” Hand functionality and anatomy became my focus. “I had several hand injuries that particularly affected my functionality as a musician and as an artist. “As I was making costumes it was more and more about the engineering and the mechanics and the electronics,” Southern recalled. It was while working at his “dream job” that he returned to school for a master’s in sculpture- and decided as his degree was coming to an end that he’d enter into NASA’s 2007 Astronaut Glove Challenge. As a costume designer with Izquierdo Studio, he worked on Broadway shows, movies and televised events for more than a decade, including christening the angels with their wings for several of the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows. Southern certainly has an alternate perspective - he hails from another dimension entirely.
“They need competition, they need innovators that are outside of this strict engineering world, different viewpoints and ideas about how the body works.” “It’s a weird space to occupy, directly competing with the military industrial complex as a couple of guys, but I think the industry and NASA need that,” Southern told RealClearLife about his business, Final Frontier Design, during a recent visit to the studio. Upon meeting him, you’d be forgiven for not realizing that Southern, who stands tall but unassuming, is contracted by the world’s greatest space agency to propel humankind farther than ever into the cosmos. Surrounded by spools of thread, other-worldly bobbins and walls lined with the suits of astronauts past, Southern works from a modest warehouse tucked away in the labyrinth of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City. Ted Southern may be the best space tailor in the universe.
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