Collection: Extreme Environment

By: Hedda Maartens

5 min read

21 Aug 2025

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Every type of extreme environment in one place — 3 chapters, Space and pressure suits, Diving and hyperbaric, Polar and high-altitude and the rest, with the plates and an inventory to download.

Three chapters, three environments that will kill an unprotected person in minutes, and one shared consequence: the garment stops being clothing and becomes a vessel. A pressure suit and a standard diving dress are both sealed volumes with a person inside, supplied from outside, and everything about how they are cut follows from that rather than from any tailoring tradition.

It also makes this the only family where the wearer cannot dress themselves. Every garment here requires assistants, a sequence and a check, and the sequence is written down. That is a kind of specification no other uniform in this archive needs, and it is the reason these objects are so completely documented — a diving dress has a parts list because a missing part is a death.

Three chapters. The contents are public; the plates and the inventory are for subscribers.

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Up to five plates from each of the 3 chapters, in full, free to anyone. Every one is credited to the collection that holds it and links back to the record.

Space and pressure suits

Pressure Suit, Sokol KV-2, Dennis Tito National Air and Space Museum · NASM-2005-26165 · date not recorded · Dennis Tito, Zvezda · CC0

Diving and hyperbaric

Espalion - Musée du Scaphandre (15) Wikimedia Commons · 59953540 · 2017-06-02 10:50:35 · JoJan · CC BY 3.0

Curacao Derp Divers on Tour Wikimedia Commons · 79210781 · 2019-05-25 · Bas.van.winden · CC BY-SA 4.0

Diver (6088075747) Diver · 97407895 · 2008-01-24 08:21 · rumpleteaser from Nagoya, Japan · CC BY 2.0

FBI search during Amerithrax investigation Wikimedia Commons · 144755768 · 2002-12-12 · Federal Bureau of Investigation · Public domain

محمد بنجعة أثناء الغوص في أحد شواطئ المغرب – قناة رحلة غوص Diving Trip Wikimedia Commons · 177832005 · 2025-11-04 · Mbenjaa · CC BY-SA 4.0

Diving suit Wellcome V0039820 Wikimedia Commons · 36634749 · 2014-11-06 08:11:04 · creator not recorded · CC BY 4.0

Polar and high-altitude

61-124-M, Uniform, Boots, Antarctic Expedition, Admiral Byrd (5415423251) 61-124-M, Uniform, Boots, Antarctic Expedition, Admiral Byrd · 21433245 · 2011-02-03 09:10 · Naval History & Heritage Command from Washington, DC, USA · CC BY 2.0

Medicines and Medicine chest; Peary North Pole 1909 Wellcome L0032743 Wikimedia Commons · 36056301 · 2014-10-11 18:53:45 · creator not recorded · CC BY 4.0

Andrew Keith Jack's Aneroid Barometer Wikimedia Commons · 51047862 · 2014 · Michelle McFarlane, Museum Victoria · CC BY 4.0

Hurley and Shackleton, Antarctic Ice Flow, 1914-1915 State Library NSW a423023h State Library of New South Wales Slides 22/183 · 63821298 · between 1915 and 1916date QS:P,+1915-00-00T00:00:00Z/8,P1319,+1915-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1916-00-00T00:00:00Z/9 · creator not recorded · Public domain

Photograph depicting the deck of the HMAS Wyatt Earp. (25842353998) Photograph depicting the deck of the HMAS Wyatt Earp. · 65844337 · 2018-01-12 17:21 · Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons · No restrictions

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Hedda Maartens — MA in fashion design, then eleven years in the industry designing for people who had no say in what they wore. Now writes about prescribed dress: how a garment was made to work, and what it was made to make a person into.