Jeong.

The aviator helmet he wears belonged to his grandfather, a pilot who died before Jeong was born. At first he left it on a shelf, like a piece from another world. One very cold day he grabbed it along with the jacket, and something clicked: his colleagues stopped seeing it as a costume and started saying that now it really was him. The chinstrap broke on one outing and he sewed it himself with waxed thread. He doesn't buy new things when he can fix the old ones.

It's printed with his front-facing portrait: the crisp rosettes, the helmet pulled down and the goggles on top, the turtleneck of his cornflower blue sweater. I created it looking straight ahead and against a clean background: that's what there is, and it's enough. The Amur leopard is the only one that adapted to snow, growing up to seven centimeters of coat in winter, and Jeong holds to that too: at thirty below zero he's more alert and more himself than in the middle of July. A warm layer with a character who understands the cold.