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Shining 3D & MAGARIMONO Partner for 3D Printed Shoes

STEP DIFFERENT.

Heresy as the standard for the future.

New footwear unbound by conventions.

Possibilities through fusing material and technology.

Processes never before challenged.

We aim for footwear capable of meeting such goals.

-MAGARIMONO.com

High-fashion is getting another boost from high-tech as Hangzhou-based Shining 3D collaborates with MAGARIMONO, a Japanese company manufacturing designer footwear. Endeavoring to send their clientele walking on clouds, Shining 3D and MAGARIMONO have teamed up to create four new designs for the MAGARIMONO ORIGINALS CLOUD Collection.

While most consumers want aesthetically pleasing shoes that are also comfortable (not always an easy ‘feat’ to pull off), the designers invoke the concept of cushiony luxury combined with allusions to the four different types of clouds: cumulus, cirrus, stratus and nimbus.

“The design incorporates an amorphous shape in which water circulates while changing shape, such as bubbles, waves and clouds,” explains the MAGARIMONO team in a recent press release sent to 3DPrint.com regarding the project.

Although most famous for manufacturing of the EinScan series of scanners and 3D printers using FDM, SLA, SLS and SLM technology, this is not Shining 3D’s first experience in working with footwear manufacturers; in fact, they have contributed to the success of other famous shoe brands in China, and continue to grow in that space through offering greater numbers of shoe soles worldwide, printed with TPU on their SLS printers.

“Digital modeling and 3D printing have enabled today´s designers to create novel objects of previously near-impossible form,” said Eric Ludlum of Core77. “Elaborate shapes have become a hallmark of the medium but thankfully form-giving as a practice has pulled back from a complete embrace of the aesthetic and now finds success with a restrained mix of those digital flourished with classic surfaces.

“Japanese brand MAGARIMONO manages this trick in their new line of shoes. What makes it an interesting launch is that they´ve taken some of the creative strangeness cut from the formal resolution, and found a place for it elsewhere in their overall creative package. It counteracts the seriousness and sterility that can build up in tight digitally-enabled product development loops.”

The advantages of 3D printing are on full display here as customized shoes are fabricated for consumers, allowing them to choose the type of cloud they would like to ‘walk on.’ Cloud pattern soles are then produced on the Shining 3D EP-C5050 Pro TPU 3D Printer, continuing with the concept of condensation in the form of ‘waterdrops,’ and the continued ‘transformation of the elements’ as imagined by the MAGARIMONO designers.

3D printing continues to serve the fashion industry, from 3D printed haute couture to dresses bordering on the 4D that morph to their environment, jewelry, and more. Many have also shown interest in 3D printing footwear, including some of the biggest brands in athletic wear: Adidas, New Balance, Under Armour, Reebok, Nike and more.

Find out more about this recent collaboration in the video below, or visit the Shining 3D or MAGARIMONO websites.

[Source / Images: Shining 3D]

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Julia Körner’s 3D-Printed Setae Jacket Inspired by Butterfly Wings

The delicate wings of a butterfly have inspired a great deal of 3D-printed innovations, such as stronger structures for electronics and ultra lightweight geometries for better load bending, unique artwork, and even fashion. Pioneering 3D-printed fashion designer, architect, adjunct professor at UCLA, and, most recently, 3D-printed costume designer, Julia Körner has long used the technology in her work. Now, she has turned to 3D printing once again for the design of her eye-catching Setae Jacket, which was, as you may have guessed, inspired by butterfly wings.

“Julia Koerner is an award-winning Austrian designer working at the convergence of architecture, product and fashion design. She is internationally recognised for design innovation in 3D-Printing, Julia’s work stands out at the top of these disciplines,” her website states. “The constantly intriguing aspect of Julia’s work is its embodiment of a beautiful organic aesthetic.”

She was one of 15 designers chosen by non-profit organization Austrianfashion.net to show her work—the 3D printed Setae jacket—at its recent Virtual Design Festival (VDF). The organization is a platform that is focused on promoting contemporary Austrian fashion designers and partnered with VDF to exhibit innovative fashion designs and accessories by designers who were either born, or are currently based, in Austria, and also produce their work locally and sustainably.

Austrianfashion.net said, “[Körner’s] work on the future of 3D, as well as on its current applications, can be seen as revolutionary practice. Strongly believing that the future of fashion is 3D, Körner is making sure she is at the forefront of the revolution.”

Her beautiful, 3D-printed Setae Jacket is part of the 3D printed Chro-Morpho fashion design collection by Stratasys, which we’ve discussed here before, and was also inspired by colorful butterfly wings. The collection is meant to show how technology and textiles can work together, and even create commercially viable pieces of clothing. The jacket was 3D printed out of flexible Vero material on one of the company’s multimaterial printers, either the J750 or the J850, and every bristle resembles setae, which is a stiff structure akin to a hair or a bristle.

“The research explores digital setae pattern design and multi-color 3D printing on fabric, inspired by microscopic butterfly wing patterns. Butterﬂy wings are made up of membranes which are covered by thousands of colorful scales and hairs, plate-like setae,” Körner’s website states.

She used photographs of Madagascan Sunset Butterfly wings, and the setae on the wings were actually digitized into an algorithm, “which translates the color pixels into 3D bristle patterns which correspond to the form of the garment design.”

“The digital designs are 3D printed in an innovative way, without any support material and directly on fabric,” the site continues. “The relation between the colourful rigid setae and the ﬂexible fabric create enigmatic visual effects when the garment is in motion.”

To form the jacket, the bristles were 3D printed on denim. When the garment is worn, the setae move along with the person, which is a really interesting effect.

“Due to the movement and delicate color transformation, it expresses a true organic animal flow that comes to life,” Stratasys states.

Do I spy a zipper?

It is definitely a unique piece, and while lack of comfort and wearability is always one of my biggest critiques when it comes to 3D-printed fashion, the Setae Jacket absolutely looks wearable to me.

What do you think? Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the comments below.

(Source: Dezeen / Image Credits: Ger Ger 2019)

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Anouk Wipprecht’s 3D-Printed Proximity Dresses Are Perfect for Social Distancing

If you don’t remember the stunning and technical work from Anouk Wipprecht—the Dutch fashion design working on “rethinking fashion in the age of digitalization” by combining engineering, fashion, robotics, science, and interaction/user experience in an emerging field known as FashionTech—let me refresh your memory. Noting that fashion lacks microcontrollers—something I never would have thought about—Wipprecht is an amazingly unique designer, who wants her clothing to, according to her website, “facilitate and augment the interactions we have with ourselves and our surroundings.”

“In a future where electronics are predicted to be embedded in everyday objects, – what kind of clothes will we wear? Will future techno fashion be purely aesthetic – or will it expand our awareness, acting like an intelligent second skin? Will we become super sensory, physically aware of data flows, communicating our internal states through the garments we wear? And, most pertinently perhaps, how will we socialize in our world when we are supervised by technology?”

Anouk Wipprecht’s Smoke Dress

Back in 2014, Wipprecht launched a campaign to create the first crowdsourced 3D-printed dress, and followed this up with her Synapse Dress, partnering with Materialise, Niccolo Casas, and Intel to create a wearable that leverages the wearer’s own electrical currents for a fully immersive experience. The designer later combined 3D printing with virtual reality to create a collection of dresses for Audi, and worked with model and musician Viktoria Modesta to fabricate 3D-printed prosthetics for musical performance.

Now, the high-tech futurist designer is back with two new 3D-printed wearables that could be very useful in this time of social distancing, due to the continuing COVID-19 crisis: the Proximity Dresses, Robotic Personal Space Defenders.

“Extending my research into proxemics and the body, I have fabricated two new dresses that create physical barriers when a person is detected in the immediate surroundings of the wearer,” Wipprecht said. “These twin dresses respond based on proximity and thermal sensors and indicates strangers within the intimate, personal, social and public space around the wearer.”

As with Wipprecht’s Smoke Dress and 3D-printed, robotic Spider Dress, which literally moves itself into an attack position if the embedded proximity biosensors detect that the wearer is uncomfortable, the design for these new dresses is based on Edward T. Hall’s Proxemics Theory. She explains that the theory defines “four spaces around the body,” each of which has its “own characteristic distances.”

Anouk Wipprecht’s 3D-Printed Spider Dress

“Whereas Hall had to measure the space between people using a wooden stick, I have been working since 2007 to translate these concepts into the digital domain, in order to measure the spaces between people up to a range of 25 feet,” she explained.

The Proximity Dresses use robotic, nylon 3D-printed hip mechanisms to extend when necessary. Additionally, they feature a transparent collar, 3D printed from clear resin, with some fancy sensors that offer noise-free distance readings.

Anouk Wipprecht’s Proximity Dress

These sensors use “high-output acoustic power combined with continuously variable gain, real-time background automatic calibration, real-time waveform signature analysis, and noise rejection algorithms. This holds true even in the presence of various acoustic or electrical noise sources, making it suitable for on-body use.”

By using the sensors, Wipprecht’s unique designs can invisibly trace their surroundings. Additionally, since the sensors don’t record any images or video, the dresses are not a threat to privacy, as nearby people remain anonymous.

“The Proximity Dress 2.0 is based on my 2012 prototype of this dress using hip mechanics create distance and a proximity sensor (ultrasonic rangefinder) for VW showcase during IAA, in Germany,” she concludes.

Check out the video below to see Wipprecht discuss her innovative, defensive Proximity Dress with Hyphen-Hub:

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For a Personalized Look, Try a 3D Printed Pompillon Bow Tie

There’s something fantastically dapper about a bow tie, and a 3D printed version definitely takes this fashionable look the extra mile. Ties and bow ties, along with ascots and scarves, were born from the cravat, and can quickly elevate an outfit. But using 3D printing to make these fashion-forward accessories means that you can easily play with the shape and texture of the tie for a more unique aesthetic.

Pompillon, a clothing brand based in Italy and Germany, was founded in 2017, based on an idea from bow tie collector and aerospace engineer Luca Pompa, also the founder of the brand. That idea, of course, was to use 3D printing to make more creative, customizable bow ties. The name Pompillon is a playful merger between the surname Pompa and ‘papillon,’ which the website explains is “the French name of the beloved bow tie.”

“The vast assortment of colors of bow ties and combinable ribbons wants to encourage everyone’s imagination to the maximum, to personalize his style with a small accessory with attention to every detail,” the Pompillon Facebook page states. “Moreover, the various editions will allow collecting them in all its lines.”

3D printed Pompillon bow ties merge classic shapes with creativity, experimentation, and technology; add in attention to detail and a wide range of ribbons and tie colors, and the sky is the limit when it comes to personalizing your style. The Pompillon tie takes the typical bow tie silhouette, reduces it down to the most essential lines, and reinterprets the accessory with 3D printing.

The brand uses another Italian original to fabricate its bow ties – Sharebot 3D printers. Pompillon bow ties are 3D printed using a hexagon infill shape. Several of these six-sided polygons, all with sides of equal length, are joined together to make the bow tie and optimize “structural packing to the maximum.”

3D printed Pompillon bow ties are perfect for classic, everyday style, and for more formal occasions as well. The brand’s ideal clientele are those who appreciate a personalized and colorful look, as they enjoy dressing in a refined way, without being boring.

The bow ties are 3D printed out of plant-based, biodegradable PLA material from renewable resources, which keeps them lightweight. In the future, Pompillon will make special editions of its bow ties out of carbon fiber, marble powder, and even wood.

Pompillon has two versions of its bow tie – the filled Gentlemen and the open Rebel. When you combine the two, it makes the Unique model. The brand also offers a Gala Edition bow tie, which appear to only come in black and white for more sophisticated evenings, à la James Bond. These 3D printed bow ties are completely customizable with a variety of colors, clips, and ribbon, so you have a lot of choices to play around with in making your own unique accessory.

You can visit the brand’s online shop page to see what’s available. Two of the looks I really like are the Pompillon Dark Rebel, which is a red ribbon and black bow tie combination for just €24.90, and the Pompillon Unique White Snow & Blue Ocean, also at a price of €24.90. A 3D printed Gala Edition bow tie will set you back just €26.90, and several of the Pompillon Gentlemen ties, including my favorite in the limited edition Nature Green color, only cost €19.90.

They even look good on dogs!

“Have fun using them in bulk or combined with our other Pompillon. Make it unique and customizable for every look and mood,” the shop page says.

“Take a picture wearing it and post it on social media. If you send it to info@pompillon.it, it will be published and advertised on our social networks! plus you will have the chance to win a free one…be Lucky!”

Would you wear a 3D printed Pompillon bow tie? Let us know! Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

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Stratasys and threeASFOUR Debut NYFW Collection, Featuring a Dress with Elements 3D Printed Directly on the Fabric

NEW YORK, NEW YORK A model walks the runway during threeASFOUR Runway Show hosted by Klarna STYLE360 NYFW on September 11, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Thomas Concordia/Getty Images for Style360)

As is the case with many other industries, from aerospace and medical to automotive and military, 3D printing has been infiltrating the world of fashion…and what better venue to highlight the combination of technology and textiles than New York Fashion Week? Held in September and February, the semi-annual New York Fashion Week (NYFW) series of events is one of the world’s four major fashion weeks.

Years ago, New York City design firm threeASFOUR founded an avant garde fashion label that frequently uses 3D printing in its garments, which we’ve seen at previous NYFW events. For the September 2019 series, the company teamed up again with frequent collaborator Stratasys for a truly innovative runway look: the first high fashion garment with elements that were 3D printed directly onto the fabric itself. The Chro-Morpho collection, introduced at the firm’s fall/winter runway show, shows that 3D printing on clothing has commercial potential.

“This has significant implications from a business perspective,” Craig Librett, the Senior Public Relations & Public Affairs Manager for Stratasys, told us. “Instead of creating elements separately – and manually affixing them later – this new technique enables fashion houses and brands to develop hundreds of exclusive pieces with 3D printed elements that can be sold and worn on the mass market.”

With a few exceptions, most 3D printed fashion consists of elements that are 3D printed separately, and later affixed to the garment itself. But Stratasys believes that 3D printing directly onto textiles could really help open up the technology’s “commercial viability” in terms of functional, flexible, and modern apparel.

“Within the next two years, I believe consumers will be able to purchase an array of 3D-printed garments from high-fashion brands. And the result will be access to an explosion of unique color and texture combinations that are simply not possible through traditional methods,” Stratasys Art, Design and Fashion Director Naomi Kaempfer said in a press release.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK A model walks the runway during threeASFOUR Runway Show hosted by Klarna STYLE360 NYFW on September 11, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Thomas Concordia/Getty Images for Style360)

Stratasys worked with threeASFOUR and fashion designer Travis Fitch to create the Chro-Morpho collection, which was inspired by the color morphology and light filtering of butterly and insect wings. For instance, a Greta-Oto dress from the collection uses a lenticular effect, engineered by Stratasys, to play with both color and light – spherical cells made of photopolymers the size of fish scales were 3D printed directly onto polyester, which causes the piece’s color to shift each time it moves.

“We’ve created the skin-like illusion of switching shades and depth to portray the insect’s innate camouflage, color diversion and luminosity. With 3D design and printing, we’ve embodied the fragility and light wing movement of the butterfly. It’s a stunning display of nature, fashion and technology,” explained Adi Gill, Co-Founder and Creative Director of threeASFOUR.

The dress has 27 parts made up of thousands of cells – each piece is made up a clear lens that contains strips of color inside. All told, it took about 17 hours to 3D print the polymers onto the dress using the Stratasys J750 3D printer, which just made its NYFW debut but has been previously used in fashion 3D printing.

The full-color, multimaterial PolyJet 3D printer is able to produce over 500,000 different combinations of colors, gradients, textures, and transparencies. Designers can enjoy more design freedom, as the system is able to handle the microscopic layers and delicate geometries of 3D printed garments, and the J750 is also beneficial to a designer’s business, as it can replace multiple manufacturing machines, make the supply chain simpler, and save on time, cost, and space.

This latest NYFW project with threeASFOUR and Fitch is a major step forward for Stratasys in its quest to combine 3D printing with fashion for high-end clothing and, hopefully, series production in the future, for those of us who can’t afford clothing pieces right off the runway. According to Kaempfer, 3D printed fashion is more about working with fabric materials, instead of just replacing them.

“Soft, lithe fabric touches the skin, while 3D-printed designs adorn the outer garment,” Kaempfer said. “This approach, developed through months of collaboration and testing, was the only way to realize the designers’ vision. It brings the intricacy, nuance and splendor of the dresses to life.”

In order to encourage artists, designers, engineers, and scientists to explore using 3D printing for fashion, Stratasys is also providing its PolyJet technology to the European Union Re-FREAM program, which is funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program and part of the broader Science, Technology & the Arts (STARTS) initiative.

Kaempfer explained, “We are always looking to revolutionize manufacturing methods, pioneer new design options, and inspire designers and students to create without boundaries. Our mission is to change the way people think about design and to redefine what’s possible.”

The collaborative, 3D printed Chro-Morpho collection will travel around to museums across the US once NYFW is over. Starting on October 21st, you can see it on display for yourself at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s “Designs for Different Futures” exhibition, and in 2020 the collection will head to both the Art Institute of Chicago and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

[Images: Stratasys]

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Designer Julia Daviy Introduces Her Digitally Customizable 3D Printed Skirt

3D printing is moving ever closer to gaining a true home in mainstream commercial applications, thanks to the impact the technology is having on consumer fashion products such as jewelry, footwear, and clothing. While 3D printed fashion was still considered to be more of a novelty a few years ago, efforts have been increasing to make it more common – even in the classroom. Additionally, the technology is helping to usher in a more sustainable and eco-friendly way of manufacturing garments…and designer Julia Daviy is helping to lead the charge.

In addition to designing clothes, Daviy is also an ecologist and clean technology industry manager, and uses 3D printing to make cruelty-free, zero-waste clothing. She believes that the technology will change how the world produces clothing, especially when it comes to some of the more problematic issues of garment manufacturing, such as animal exploitation, chemical pollution, energy consumption, and material waste.

“Our goal was never to demonstrate the viability of 3D printed clothing and leave things at that. We’ll have succeeded when beautiful, comfortable, ethically manufactured and environmentally friendly clothes are the standard,” Daviy stated. “The innovations we’ve made on the production and marketing side of the equation are just as important as the technological breakthroughs that have gotten us this far.”

Concerned with the economically and environmentally irresponsible ways most clothes are made, she created an activewear line made with organic fabrics, and went on to study 3D printing at the University of Illinois in an attempt to find a better, “more complete alternative.” Daviy created her first wearable, 3D printed piece in 2017, and continued working to grow her knowledge base. She experimented with multiple 3D printing techniques, like FDM and SLA, and spent time working with manufacturers on various filament specifications.

At New York Fashion Week in September, Daviy released the first 3D printed, functional, women’s fashion collection in the US that uses large-format 3D printing. While I wouldn’t have called most of the pieces in that collection appropriate for everyday use, all of them, like the Pure Nature Suit, definitely looked wearable. But now the pioneering designer has come out with something that I would definitely classify as a functional garment: what she’s calling the first digitally customizable, widely available 3D printed skirt.

The skirt is environmentally friendly, made with ethical manufacturing, and can be custom designed and purchased on Daviy’s website so it fits the size and personality of the customer. The 3D printed, digitally customizable skirt meets, according to the website, “your highest sustainable and technological expectations.”

“This is a truly sustainable, zero-waste skirt that was designed and produced in the USA using groundbreaking technology invented and patented by Julia Daviy. This method allows Daviy to 3D print clothing with less than 1% of waste in the clothing production process,” the website reads.

“The skirt is produced by combining innovative 3D printing practices with fabric linings and luxury trimmings that meet the highest environmental and ethical standards.”

Customers can choose almost everything about the skirt, from its color and style down to the waistline. Then, Daviy and her team create a digital model of the skirt using this information, and fabricate it on a large-scale 3D printer, using Daviy’s patented, zero-waste process, out of recyclable TPE material; the organic, stretchable lining is 5% Lycra and 95% silk.

I went to the website to design my own skirt, which is typically delivered in ten days’ time, though you can choose faster delivery options. The only pattern choice is organic, but there are three styles to choose from: mini, A-line, and pencil. You can select a high or short waist wrap, or none at all, and you can also choose to add pockets (yes, pockets! Pause for a moment of celebration!). Color choices are black, blue, white, nude, and yellow, and the lining can be black, white, or nude.

“You are unique,” the website states. “Wear a garment that reflects your identity.”

The skirt is designed for a slightly loose fit, and should be hand washed separately in cold water and dried flat; it should not be ironed.

Based on looks alone, I would wear multiple versions of this cute skirt anywhere. But, as to be expected with customizable products, the more things you add on, the higher the price tag goes. A mini skirt with no waist wrap and no pockets is already breaking the bank for me at $780, and when I designed an A-line skirt with a short waist wrap and pockets, the price shot up to $1,350. But again, customized garments anywhere don’t come cheap, and at least you can sleep tight knowing that Daviy’s zero-waste pieces are more eco-friendly.

“I started to experiment with 3D printing because I believe that in an age of radical change and global challenges, people need absolutely new clothing. The first stage is to simplify digital customization and 3D printing of flexible and wearable clothing. We’ve accomplished that, and I think that consumers will respond,” Daviy said. “Once we’ve brought this technology into the mainstream, we plan to use 3D printing to make smart clothing that integrates technology even further into the design and function of our collection.”

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

[Images: Julia Daviy]

Why 3D Printing Needs to be in the Modern Fashion Designer’s Skillset

The world of 3D printing is constantly evolving. Historically its primary use has been in engineering, but it is now poised to revolutionise the fashion industry, changing how we produce anything and everything wearable such as shoes, dresses and accessories. While 3D printing isn’t ubiquitous in high street stores just yet, the inclusion of it in recent runway shows is proving its worth for designers and its exciting potential in fashion.

The fashion industry has historically been slow to adopt the latest technology, but recent years have been characterised by a digital revolution. From e-commerce stores to IoT and wearables, the use of technology in fashion is widespread, and will only increase with time. Just as those emerging technologies have started to change the industry, 3D printing is poised to do the same.

Why 3D fashion?

3D printing is starting to broaden the traditional boundaries of design and allow designers to quickly turn some of their most testing design concepts into reality. It allows designers to create completely new designs that were simply too complex, challenging or time consuming using traditional techniques. Now that 3D printing is easily accessible, we’re starting to see more original 3D designs infiltrate the runway.

For example, Iris Van Herpen incorporated 3D printed ‘face jewellery’ into her catwalk look at the 2019 Paris Fashion Week. This original, customisable content is something that 3D printing allows to be easily designed and created not just only on a small scale, but also en-masse. This level of originality is unprecedented and is one that a designer would struggle to achieve without 3D printing technology, enabling Van Herpen to design the jewellery that was truly unique to the wearer and customised to fit their face perfectly.

“Cellchemy” facemask by Iris Van Herpen.

Van Herpen has also used 3D printing in a lot of her high-profile fashion pieces, to bring her couture visions to life. Her first 3D printed design featured in 2010 and since then she has taken the fashion world by storm with her bespoke, original designs. In 2017, Cara Delevingne wore a stunning bespoke 3D printed dress to the premier of Valerian and the city of a Thousand Planets. Continuing her star-studded client list, she also designed a dramatic 3D printed dress for Beyoncé in her music video ‘Mine’.

Fashion has also dominated the runway at New York Fashion Week on numerous occasions but notably in 2016. threeASFOUR and Travis Fitch worked harmoniously to produce two breakthrough, truly unique dresses, highlighting the originality that 3D printing can help a designer achieve. Following the walk, Gabi Asfour from threeASFOUR credited the functionality that 3D printing provided to enable them to design and make a new textile that didn’t already exist to work with all the desired features of the dress. Something that may not have been possible within the original boundaries of design.

3D printed Harmonograph Dress [Image: Matt Carasella]

3D printing in mass fashion

While 3D printing is helping high push the boundaries of design in end fashion, everyday garments are starting to be feel its influence. Consumers today are always looking for the latest technologies and design techniques in their clothes, and brands are beginning to respond.

The footwear giants, Adidas and Nike have both in recent years incorporated 3D printing into their trainers and demonstrated that 3D printing can offer consumers improved customisation and more sustainable products.

Eliud Kipchoge winning the 2018 London Marathon wearing 3D printed Nike trainers.

3D printing has firmly found its place in marathon running by being the 2018 winning shoe of runner Eliud Kipchoge. Following a disaster in 2017 where his shoes became wet and heavy, Nike turned to 3D printing to reduce the weight of his trainers and personalise them bespoke for his needs. This was not the first time Nike has used 3D printing to provide personalised trainers for elite long-distance runners, created differently to suit their specific needs. This level of personalisation is on a case-by-case basis, but Adidas has found a way of bringing 3D printing to the mass market.

Quick customisation whilst maintaining originality are two more huge opportunities for 3D printing. Garments can be created to perfectly fit the size of each individual body, opening the door for true personalisation. Adidas has implemented the use of customisation into their Futurecraft designs by making a 4D trainer with a 3D printed midsole, this allows a high level of customisation to reach the mass market easily.

As this is a relatively new field, the fashion industry as a whole needs to challenge what they already know and visualise a future with 3D printing in order to see its true value. The incorporation of 3D technology into these designs make them truly original and gives the consumer the high-quality item they desire.

Although the cost of the production may be initially higher, shipping, transport and packaging costs are drastically reduced as a customer can be sent the design and can then print the product themselves.

Education

3D Printing is the future of fashion, enabling enhanced originality to be implemented into all aspiring designer’s skillset. Education and technological advancements are making it cheaper, easier and more beneficial for designers to use 3D fashion in their designs and in turn, produce more quality fashion and make it accessible to all.

As a result, many fashion academies are incorporating 3D printing into their education programmes. Manchester Met University has integrated 3D printing into their education programmes and have successfully produced a 3D knitted structure that is high in both stretch and elasticity. By integrating 3D printing into their education programme, it can be at the forefront of a modern designer’s mind when they are working professionally.

While educating a new generation of designers on 3D printing will be a gradual process, it paves the way for this technology to become part of the mainstream and increase its uptake and use across the industry.

The future of 3D printing in fashion is one that is certainly bright and optimistic, with smaller, user-friendly 3D printers such as the da Vinci nano available to all, the opportunity to learn about the technology isn’t limited to engineers or more technical professions. By allowing even the smallest fashion houses to try this technology, we’ll see more and more 3D printed fashion coming to our stores – and I look forward to seeing how it benefits us all.

Designer Julia Daviy Stuns at New York Fashion Week with Functional 3D Printed Fashion Collection

Parametric Black Ocean Dress

Clothing is one of the many tools with which we use to express ourselves. I am generally a jeans and t-shirt kind of person, but many of my shirts have quotes from books or movies on them, or logos from places I’ve visited; I also still wear many of my shirts from college. Now, I certainly don’t wear t-shirts to special events – I pull out the dresses for those – but I consider casual clothing to be more of my everyday type of outfit, and I bet I’m not the only one. But that’s one of the great things about fashion – if you consider skirts and dresses to be everyday clothes, you’ve got plenty of choices.

Speaking very generally, 3D printed pieces of clothing are not what I usually consider to be everyday wear. I personally find a lot of 3D printed fashion, while very unique and beautiful, too high concept to actually wear out anywhere. However, some 3D printing fashion designers, like Julia Daviy, are working to change this perception.

Daviy, an ecologist and clean technology industry manager, is creating a new kind of biodegradable fashion out of 3D printed plastic. She believes that 3D printing will change the way clothing is produced, and maybe even one day replace traditional textiles altogether. She also believes that the technology can be used to solve worldwide problems such as chemical pollution, animal exploitation, energy consumption, and material waste.

At this month’s prestigious New York Fashion Week (NYFW), Daviy released the first 3D printed fashion collection in the US that not only uses large-format 3D printing, but is also considered to be a functional, wearable, everyday clothing look for women. According to a press release for the Digital Journal, Daviy’s clothing “aims to liberate the creativity of women by using 3D printing technologies to create an entirely new age for the fashion industry.”

“The 2018 NYFW had history written all over it as different fashion brands across the globe took to the runway to show their latest collection. One designer that particularly caught the eyes of fashion lovers across the globe is Julia Daviy,” the Digital Journal release said. “Over the years, the concept of 3D printed pieces has grown in popularity and acceptance with designers using hard materials with ultra-sophisticated designs to create amazing pieces. However, such pieces are usually almost impossible to wear for everyday activities due to the materials used in making them.”

Daviy’s 3D printed Liberation Collection, consisting of bespoke skirts, dresses, and two suits, debuted on September 6th at The Fashion Meet Technology NYFW event. She used both FDM and SLA technology to 3D print her pieces, and combined multiple filaments. Daviy personally designs each piece from scratch, and also completes each stage of production herself.

“Julia Daviy’s works are particularly unique as all looks are completely 3D printed, which is unlike other designers in the industry that print on several parts and require further post-processing to get the final piece,” the Digital Journal press release stated. “This innovation in addition to the use of “wearable” materials that helps to bring 3D printed fashion into the mainstream of everyday clothing are distinguishing factors of the designer’s collection.”

Pink Coral Neon Skirt

I need to stop right here and say, for the record, that while I think Daviy’s 3D printed collection has some stunning pieces in it (her Polka Dot Exoskeleton dress inspired by sea urchins is one of my favorites), I don’t think the vast majority of it could be considered everyday wear. The closest it comes, in my opinion, is with the Lace Mini Skirt and the Pink Coral Neon Skirt, the latter of which used parametric lines and a 3D pattern not dissimilar to snakeskin. But I can’t imagine walking out of my house on some random Wednesday afternoon in the Fragility Dress.

However, with a few exceptions (looking at you, Parametric Skin Suit), I will agree that most of the collection appears to be pretty wearable. Watching some of the videos on Daviy’s website, the clothing all appears to be breathable and easy to move around in, and I would wear that cute Parametric Black Ocean Dress, 3D printed out of biodegradable PLA and flexible TPU, to any fancy evening event. Just hanging out at the mall on the weekend, however – not so much.

However, feel free to take what I’m saying with a grain of salt – this is coming from a person who is currently clad in denim shorts, a black tank top, and fluffy gray slippers, after all.

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