3D printed fashions give designers a new means of expressing bold and inspiring looks. This week, the second of three 7 day events in the French capital’s fashion calendar, designers at Paris Fashion Week 2018 are flaunting the latest in Haute Couture.
One of a kind and tailor-made, Haute Couture is the perfect platform for 3D printing. And who better to show us how to do it than Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen.
On Monday at the Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie, van Herpen introduced her Spring/Summer 2018 collection. Each of the 21 garments are made using a cutting-edge digital technology – laser-cutting, parametric design or 3D printing – yet, each one has a natural, organic quality to it.
“Don’t forget how engineered nature is, itself,” van Herpen comments in an article for Vogue, “I think we as humans don’t even come close to the intelligence within nature,”
“It’s funny how people think that nature is simple and technology is complex—it’s the opposite; technology is simple and nature is complex.”
Fine, 3D printed foliage
‘Foliage’ is one of three fabrication techniques showcased by van Herpen in the Ludi Nature (Nature Play) 2018 collection. With the technique, van Herpen 3D prints delicate leaf pattern directly onto a fine, semi-transparent fabric.
The ‘Foliage’ leaves can be as thin as 0.8 mm “creating exceptional softness,” and a dress that flows natural – as if it didn’t include plastic at all.
Amy Verner of Vogue Magazine writes that the illusory, 3D printed fabrics “have become so precise that you feel she is resurfacing the topography of the human body.”
The ‘Foliage’ technique was developed in collaboration with the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) that has, incidentally, conducted some interesting 4D printed material experiments for items that “self-assemble” on demand.
Entropy and Data Dust
In a second ‘Entropy’ process, van Herpen describes a technique of bonding of mylar polyester, “nude leather and liquid fabric,” to be lasercut and interwoven, to create a graded, undulating fabric.”
In the last technique, ‘Data Dust’, computational algorithms are used to make parametric patterns laser cut to hug an invisible silk tulle netting, creating what van Herpen terms “radiant glitches.”
See it live
Haute Couture shows at Paris Fashion Week will run until 25th January 2018. The final, and most famous of all the events (Women’s week) will take place from the 27th February – 6th March.
New York Fashion Week will be bringing all the latest fashion to the States from the 8th to the 14th of February, however, there are many events around the country seeking to make the most of the Spring/Summer season.
From 27th January, an exhibition at Florida Institute of Technology’s Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts aims to explore digital themes similar to those expressed in van Herpen’s work. The show, titled Coded Couture, “presents garments, video, objects, drawings, photographs and interactive elements by 10 national and international designers” created in the theme of coding – to “convert something into a code so as to convey a secret meaning.” 3D printing is tipped to be a part of the exhibit.
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Featured image shows look 0126 in Iris van Herpen’s Ludi Nature collection. Photo via Iris van Herpen
