Ganit Goldstein, a fashion design graduate from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, is one of many innovative fashion designers using 3D printing to create their designs. Recently, she premiered a new experimental collection at Milan Design Week called Shifted Craft. The project was supported by Stratasys and consists of seven pieces of 3D printed jewelry (combined with Swarovski crystals) and two 3D printed pairs of shoes – in an industry first, the multi-colored shoes were 3D printed directly onto leather.
Together with 15 other designers, Goldstein was chosen to publicly display her collection as part of the event’s Israeli Pavilion. Her inspiration for the project, as with some of her prior collections, is the time she spent in Japan learning the traditional ‘ikat’ technique for dying fabrics and yarns at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Goldstein’s vision for Shifted Craft was to use both the traditional ikat and modern 3D printing to, as Stratasys put it, “explore the relationship between body, form and technology.”
Goldstein believes in an interdisciplinary approach to design, and received support from Stratasys over the last two years for her boundary-pushing research project, which was centered around using the company’s multi-material PolyJet technology to amalgamate concepts of fashion. She used the company’s J750 3D printer to complete high-quality tests with complex shapes, including scaled parts that were as small as a single millimeter in thickness.
“Stratasys’ advanced 3D printing technology provides me with the unrestricted ability to print my designs in any color, form, and complexity. This collection was designed to shatter traditional limitations, by using the unique capabilities of 3D printing to innovate fashion design as we know it,” Goldstein explained.
“I wanted to make the entire collection accessible and ‘ready-to-wear’, in order to show the real potential of 3D printing. Certainly, with regards to the two pairs of shoes in the collection, we are breaking new ground for using such methods to create wearable shoes. I was able to print directly onto leather – an entirely new feature for 3D printing technology.”
We’ve seen 3D printed fashion pieces that include leather, printed sheets of material that closely resemble leather, and hybrid 3D printers that allow you to engrave leather, but not actually print leather itself, until now.
“Ganit lawfully and rigorously seeks to analyze and express the specific dimensions and qualities of the Japanese Ikat craft with use of parametric design, the containment within the borders of 2.5 dimension, while the technology enables full 3D modeling is an interesting one,” said Naomi Kaempfer, the Creative Director of Art, Design and Fashion at Stratasys. “Stratasys is focused on promoting and researching the extents of 3D textile design and applications. With new advances made in printing directly onto textiles, we are entering a new era of fashion design. We are committed to exploring innovations with our collaborators.”
In order to digitally manipulate the physical properties of the fabric, Goldstein used digitally-created materials for the two pairs of 3D printed shoes in her new collection. Thanks to the full-color capabilities of the J750, Goldstein is able to rapidly 3D print on fabric without relying on the molds or tools usually required for more traditional methods of textile fabrication. Her materials also make it possible for her to have total control over her pieces’ customization, design, and geometry.
Goldstein used 3D scanning and programming to design the shapes for her seven beautiful pieces of jewelry in a parametric software program, which were then 3D printed in all their multi-material and full-color glory on the Stratasys J750. To top it all off, Swarovski crystals were added to really make the jewelry and shoes shine.
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[Images provided by Ganit Goldstein]
