Gotta love New York City. Designer Ted Southern decided he wanted to make body armor for a living—not the military stuff, I'm talking Knight and Samurai armor—and shortly after getting his Masters from Pratt, actually found a gig doing it in Manhattan.
Southern's work at a costume and prop fabrication business led him in some random directions: He began designing the wings for those Victoria's Secret models and developed an interest in spacesuit gloves. (Then again, these things might not seem unusual to a man whose undergraduate major was the French Horn.) He entered a 2007 NASA-sponsored spacesuit glove design competition, and while he didn't win, he ended up giving a fellow entrant a ride back to Manhattan after the ceremony.
That entrant was Nikolay Moiseev, a Russian former cosmonaut and spacesuit designer.
The two kept in touch, decided to collaborate on an entry in the 2009 iteration of the same competition, and won 2nd place together.
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