Fashion on Mars – Anurita Chandola’s highly personalised space suit is on display in the Martian house.
Figure 1 & 2 “Astro Anurita on Mars” – Space suit
“Spacewear” by Barbara Brownie fuelled my idea of making clothes for space. My Spacesuit revolves around the idea of being alone in space with personal objects that connect me to my life and family back on Earth.
Figure 3 : Initial concept of Astro Anurita’s Space suit
While researching about weightlessness and “Mars as a potential destination”, I found out that lot of time and resources have been spent on creating the space suit but, “far less time has been devoted to considering the features of dresses to be worn in the interiors of space vessels”. The environment that is weightless, challenges all the concepts and processes that are taken for granted in the world of fashion and dressmaking. I strongly feel that these methods need to be reconsidered with the “emergence of a commercial space travel industry”. Inspired by Yinka Shonibare’s ‘refuge astronaut’ and Lucy Ortas ‘Refuge wear’, I created a space suit using my mnemonic objects that represent relations with my family and my cultural background. I created an absolute necessary list of items to carry with me to the “off-planet colony” as every item I carry would have been a “huge expense”. Therefore, the space suit that I made is a multi-functional piece of clothing that could easily be converted into everyday clothing items.
Figure 4 List of absolute necessary items for Mars journey
This video provides an insight on how ‘Astro Anurita’ spends a day in space. It is a complete cycle of waking up in a sleeping bag which is then converted to a space suit. Astro Anurita goes for space explorations and then back to space vessel in her zero waste subtraction cutting outfit and an Indian ‘dhoti pants’ inspired shorts. Then after an adventurous day she goes back to her sleeping bag to end her day.
Video 5 Astro Anurita’s day on Mars
Figure 6: Astro Yuri & Astro Stella’s personalised space suits
Figure 7 : Space Helmet
