Most galleries and museums were closed yesterday for Columbus Day, but I was lucky enough to find out that the Franklin Institute Science Museum (yes, I'm still in Philadelphia...) was open.
The major event currently on at the museum is the Cleopatra exhibition (that has also got a few inspiring pieces especially if you are a jewellery designer), but, since I'm doing a personal research on space fashion, I stopped for a while around the exhibits about space discoveries and about the changes space suits went through as time passed.
On display at the museum there is the classic nylon/rubberised nylon A-7 L pressure suit, in a nutshell the "Apollo" style suit.
The pressure layer is actually the critical piece of any space suit since it holds air inside allowing astronauts to live in the extreme environment of space.
The blue tubes bring in good air while used air is removed from the suit through the red ones. Accordion joints allow the suit to be flexible even when it's pressurised (that is, full of air).
Though the A-7 L is probably the most popular space suit, the one we seem to be all rather familiar with since it is easy to find images relating to it in books, magazines and on the Internet, I was more fascinated by the details of another garment defined "cooling (or cool) suit" (both the pictures in this post actually relate to the cooling suit).
This Soviet KV0-9 water cooled insulation garment was used by cosmonauts in training for the Soviet Union's manned lunar programme.
The details in the cooling suit really struck me and inspired me: there are indeed rows of plastic tubes running in and out of the net-like fabric of the suit and I think it would be interesting to transfer this concept to fashion and see if the plastic tube motif could be applied in ready-to-wear designs or reinvented using an alternative material.
I actually have half of an idea of what could be done using this technique and will definitely try to experiment with it as soon as I have time.
And what about you, do you have any idea about how you could reinvent this motif and integrate it in contemporary designs?
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