First Class
GREEN
SLEEVES
Sporting ecologically friendly
cold-weather clothing doesn’t
have to mean cloaking yourself
in a dun-colored schmata. The
perfect sweater—one that’s
earthy but elegant, cuddly but
chic—is out there, and it only
makes sense that it would come
from a design team made up of
a painter from New York (Karen
Stewart) and a graphic artist from
Montana (Howard Brown). For
chic, sustainable ladies’ sweater
options, check out the o erings
from Stewart + Brown. With a
selection of fair-trade cardigans,
sweater dresses, tanks, cape-lets and sweater coats, there’s
knitwear for every occasion.
And better, yet, Stewart + Brown
donates at least 1 percent of all
sales to “nonprofit, nongovernmental environment and social
welfare organizations.” And if
that doesn’t warm your heart …
stewartbrown.com
Daniel Presto
founder of Ata
Aerospace,
where he gets
to “play for a
living.”
On a Wing and a …
He may not wear a cape. He might not
sport spandex tights. He doesn’t appear
more than a mild-mannered engineer at
first brush. But like a modern-day Bruce
Wayne, 37-year-old Daniel Preston, C TO
and founder of Brooklyn-based defense
contractor Atair Aerospace, uses breakthrough technological advances to
save lives.
It’s fitting then that his latest invention, the EXO-Wing, the world’s small-est human-piloted jet airplane, recently
starred in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art’s critically acclaimed “
Superhe-roes: Fashion and Fantasy” exhibition.
From unprecedented strides in key
areas from computer guidance to
airdrop technology, this humble
tinker, whose work parallels that
of 007 gadget guru Q, is a marvel
in and out of the lab.
“I never read comic books as a kid,”
he claims, despite his tale’s similarity to
that of Tony “Iron Man” Stark, the fictional industrialist who, severely wounded,
invents a suit of rocket-powered, gizmo-laden armor. But that didn’t stop Preston,
whose newest creation is essentially a
combination portable exoskeleton and
jetpack, from attempting to soar early
on. “After selling my glass manufacturing
company,” he says, “I got bored and became a skydiving enthusiast. But in 1998,
a parachute defect left me with a broken
neck. After recovering, I began researching ways to develop safer equipment for
myself and my friends.”
His findings: that many parachute
manufacturers designed based on tradition, not science … or worse, trial and
error, with customers used as guinea
pigs. Hence, employing a more academic
approach, Preston—with no formal
training—and the privately funded Atair
were able to make huge strides in just one
year. Intrigued by potential defense applications, a proposal was submitted to the
Army … and rejected. “We were denied
because it was so far beyond anything
government o cials had seen,” he laughs,
citing the field’s until-recent reliance on
pre-WWII technology. “They didn’t think
[these enhancements] were possible.”
Thankfully, perseverance (and a scan
through Amazon.com’s virtual racks to
research doing business with bureaucracy) paid o . The company, presently
around 30 people and expecting a $25 million to $50 million IPO within the next
year, soon scored military funding for
what Preston calls “getting to play for
a living.”
