Fashion

What would Christian Dior have done with a 3D printer?

Joshua Harker
Joshua Harker
Currently, the amount of fashion industry projects involved in 3D investigation is on an unprecedented scale. We are seeing this in many high end designers like Michael Schmidt, Joshua Harker, Iris Van Herper or Francis Bitoni, who are exploring the boundaries of technology and imagination in fashion.Currently, the amount of fashion industry projects involved in 3D investigation is on an unprecedented scale. We are seeing this in many high end designers like Michael Schmidt, Joshua Harker, Iris Van Herper or Francis Bitoni, who are exploring the boundaries of technology and imagination in fashion.
Michael Schmidt
3D printing is nothing new -it was invented in 1984 by Charles ‘Chuck’ Hull -, but its influence in the fashion industry is. Today’s 3D printers can create practically anything.Electroloom is a project which is experimenting with printers that are able to create complex non-woven fabrics. Their vision is that one day we will all be able to design our own clothes, just as we are able to make music or publish a book.But 3D printing is not only about innovation in creativity. Another advantage is that 30% of cloth is thrown away when making a dress. When you think about it in a global scale, it’s quite shocking. The company Tamicare has developed a technology that prints unlimited fabric variations with any combination of features, patterns, embossing, seamless, and, most important, without wasting an inch of material. Their machine can make a pair of underwear in less than 3 seconds!And there is more...OpenKnit is an open code digital manufacturing tool that gives you the opportunity of creating customized clothes from digital files.With great power comes great responsibility and the Fifth Avenue also faces serious challenges. Analyst Group Gartner recently projected that, by 2018, 3D printing pirating could result in global IP losses of approximately 100 billon $.
Iris Van Herper
Will there ever come a time when we ask ourselves, “What clothes am I going print today”? And will printing a Marc Jacob’s dress at home be as easy as downloading the last Blockbuster? Fashion industry must learn from past mistakes of music and books.It’s an exciting trail up ahead but we still have a long way to go before these technologies become part of our lives. However, as we all know, in the technology world, a “long way” can be just a couple of years.

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