About
Who am I
Hi! My name is Veronica.
I’ve been training in Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) since 2019. Since then, my main focuses have been threefold: Competing, Creating and Teaching. I am one of the Assistant Instructors at the Atlanta Historical Fencing Academy (AHFA) in Atlanta, GA. I also founded and lead the resource group, called Arc at AHFA, for underrepresented genders to promote good club culture and to provide a focused training environment.
In the competitive scene, I most recently won the Gold medal in Women’s Longsword at SERFO 2022 as well as placing 23rd overall in Open Longsword at SERFO 2022.
In my day job, I am a professional Designer. My current job is in UX/UI design, but my degree is in Industrial Design. I enjoy solving problems with physical solutions and building products. So naturally designing gear for HEMA was an easy move.
I hope to grow the Combat Wear line to cover all types of HEMA protective equipment and bring some actual Design Thinking to the HEMA community.
I don’t know about you all, but I’ve just about HAD IT with getting bruises on the inside of my arms from where my ill-fitting chest protector would bite into my arms whenever I was in a fencing match. I even purchased a men’s chest protector (because all of the women’s offerings are boob-shaped abominations and they obviously didn’t fit me because I’m not the tiny subset of women that they were designed for) AND reformed the plastic in my oven to have it fit me in the best possible way.
I got so frustrated after training one day that I started researching all of the different types of Women’s Chest Protectors on the market. They ranged from literal jock cups that only covered 15% of someone’s chest, to boob armor with holes drilled under the boob cups — for airflow I guess. I was genuinely appalled that there wasn’t any type of protector that was actually designed for what its like to have boobs.
A few sticky-note sketches later, and the Cryptid Combat Wear Chest Protector was created. I’m a one-person show — I designed, built, and managed the production process from start to finish.