(AP)
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This guy’s career is really taking off.
Brooklyn resident Ted Southern makes angel wings for Victoria’s Secret models, does costumes for Broadway and Hollywood and is now working on NASA’s latest spacesuit.
Not bad for an art student whose first city job was at a hardware store in Chelsea.
“It’s a funny transition to go from costumes to spacesuits, but it kind of makes sense to me,” says Southern, a Pratt grad who has worked on the “Spider-Man” movies, Met operas and “The Addams Family” musical.
“Broadway has some really high-functioning costumes, and they can’t fail.”
Not surprisingly, one of his favorite jobs involved outfitting Heidi Klum in giant wings to go with her Victoria’s Secret lingerie. He has also helped put together her famously over-the-top Halloween costumes.
“Heidi is by far the best and easiest model to work with,” Southern reports. “She’s so animated and fun to be around. She’s friendly to everyone.”
Gisele Bundchen? Not so much.
“She’s really tough. She’s always screaming, ‘What the f–k is this?’ ”
His former employer, wing designer Martin Izquierdo, said, “I have nothing but admiration for Ted, but I was never aware that he had a secret ability.”
That would be his passion for science and space engineering.
Southern won $100,000 with a second-place finish in an inventors competition in 2009 that called for a new design for astronaut gloves.
The win turned into a NASA contract and the launching of his own business, which he set up in a studio in Gowanus.
Now he and his partner, Nikolay Moiseev, are hard at work perfecting the gloves.
“Hands are really critical in space, and the gloves were consistently a weak point,” Southern says. “You need more flexibility and more torque.”
He’s also working on a full suit for commercial-space travel.
Southern, recently engaged to knitwear designer Flora Gill, can feel overwhelmed at times.
“Every now and again, I realize I’m talking to people in Houston who deal with spacewalks,” he says. “It’s heady.”