Fashion fiends need to pay attention to the following announcement: the Fashion Suite by XYZ Workshop and Ultimaker is available from YouMagine to download for free. A quick browse leads to the present catalogue of inBloom dress, flexible watches, women’s clutches and men’s wallets. Each piece is intricately designed with small repetitive patterns occurring as a motif throughout the collection. Most impressive from the designs must be the communal emphasis pushed by the XYZ workshop. The idea that a community could improve designs and the 3D printing process drove the initiative and came to fruition thanks to the capabilities of the Ultimaker 3D printer.
It might prove valuable to outline the logistics for one of the more stunning works, the inBloom dress. The dress is 100% desktop printed and measures 213 cm long with an impressive train. Made of 191 panels, the dress takes 450 hours to print and used 1.7 kg of 2.85 mm PLA Flexible. Therefore, the dress used a little more than $100 of filament. With the load of filament, XYZ designed a dress blending floral and accent motifs creating a meticulous garden in black and white ready for wear. The inner skirt is layered and varies in transparency while the outer skirt consists of a knee-length piece over the front teasing hints of the back layers beneath. The skirt unfurls towards the back in a 193 cm train. It is no surprise it dazzled on the catwalk.
“I can see how 3D printing can change the fashion industry. It creates shorter lead times for a designer and gives them the freedom and flexibility to produce things in smaller quantities or even personalize a piece,” says Ultimaker’s CEO, Siert Wijnia. “What makes this dress stand apart from other 3D printed fashion is that it actually looks delicate and lace like with qualities of movement. We can’t wait to see how other people will push the limits with a desktop 3D printer, especially with the use of Flexible PLA.”
Elena Low, co-founder of XYZ Workshop, is equally excited about the 3D printing possibilities, “We wanted to make a 100% desktop 3D printed piece to showcase that 3D printed fashion was not exclusive to large, expensive industrial 3D printers. The Fashion Suite, including the inBloom Dress is released as an open source package. In order for us as a community to advance 3D printable fashion, we believe we can help stimulate and encourage experimentation by publicly providing the design files.”
The inBloom dress and other items extol the workshop and promise of collaborative projects like this one between XYZ Workshop and Ultimaker. When more designs breathe and grow on an open source, 3D printing will continue to transform the way we design and interact just as it continues to transform production in industries like fashion.
