About me

...and "How I came to design a chest guard"

In autumn 2007 when my 9-year old son first started with archery, I went along to the training session with him. The instructor told me to put a tight jumper over his jacket. I was surprised at first but she explained that otherwise the wide sleeve of the jacket would interfere with his shooting. That’s how I became aware of a problem common to all archers: The bowstring can get caught up in the clothing.

The bowstring can get caught up in the clothing. This can also deflect the bowstring as well as the arrow. That’s the reason why individual shots in archery can go completely off course although the archer may have done nothing wrong. I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t any other way of solving this problem other than for instance wrapping the upper arm in sticky tape. Apart from this I noticed that chest guards were only available for adults. But these models were the same for both men and women and therefore a poor fit for women. This was a challenge which took hold of me and, as a passionate seamstress, I began to experiment with different fabrics and patterns.

The first chest guard I designed was ,naturally enough, for my son. It was made of a highly elastic fabric and had a sleeve. The sleeve turned out to be a very good solution and I was asked if I could design a chest guard for women. As a woman myself, it became a matter of personal interest.

Getting the perfect fit posed a big challenge however and the women in the local Mötzingen archery club had to endure lots of trying-on sessions. Ambition had long since taken hold of me: my vision was that there should be a model to fit everyone. Since then I’ve been working tirelessly to make my vision of designing a good chest guard into a reality. Although my main aim was to optimize the functionality, I didn’t want to neglect the aesthetics aspect either.

Picture: Gabriel Holom, June 2017

I have designed the artebo chest guard so that it is modern and sporty yet still an elegant, colourful and individual piece of clothing.

Yours
Nadja Christow-Rose