Vice Style

If you remember the early-90s you'll remember how excited everyone got about the web. Well, nostalgic futurists, can get excited again - 3D home printing—a technology that works by spraying layers of a substance into any shape imaginable—seems likely to free manufacturing from elite control in much the same way the internet transformed publishing. We've already shown you some of the offerings designers have produced using 3D printers aka fabbers. With the rapid fall in 3D printer prices—Makerbot's Thing-O-Matic starts at around $1000—you'll soon be able to print whatever wild clothing and accessories you can think of at home, without having your tastes dictated by marketing guys, designers, commission-driven sales assistants, or having to pay for their services. Imagine how quickly trends will change when a new style is just a download away and how awesome it will be when designers can get on with designing without worrying about sales. Experimental fashion will come at the cost of the design not the cost of the advertising campaign. The fashion industry is about to get fucked up.

Then reality steps in—the patterns, blueprints, and ideas may be out there, but the other side of the equation is a technical nightmare that takes a mechanical engineering degree to make sense of. Take the RepRap, for example, a 3D printer that can print itself, if you can figure out how to actually make it work. Which nobody can. 3D printing is actually roughly where computing was in 1970s, mostly something for hobbyists, a few academics, and some niche companies.

Part of the problem is that the world of 3D printing is full of fuck the system sentiment, to the point that nothing actually works. That, and the fact that wannabe fashion designers aren't the people designing the wearable 3D printing files you can actually download. The bracelet above might well slit your wrists if you don't sand it down first, but it shows what's possible.

Another path that print at home fashion could take is a combination of 3D printing and more traditional techniques. Chloe McCormick attaches a layer of pleasingly patterned and colored weaving onto 3D printed forms.

That isn't to say that a lot of the basic technology doesn't exist. Designer Jiri Evenhuis, in collaboration with Janne Kyttanen of Freedom of Creation, used 3D printers to create textiles a decade ago. There is even chat about machines that will print jewelry from powdered gold.

So now everything is in place, what are we waiting for? We asked Otto von Busch, a self-proclaimed fashion renegade and a visiting fellow at the London College of Fashion. "The dissemination of high fashion as some kind of DIY activity is already happening," he explains, citing the example of a downloadable pattern designed by Karl Lagerfeld. "To me, that is good, as long as it also can be a way to transmit skills to people or fans.  just as Myspace opened up the industry for bands to reach fans without a record label's help. In music, the radio playlist still sets the agenda, and in fashion people like Vogue, in close alliance with their advertisers, will continue to dominate the fashion industry."

"For years people talked about the future as the paperless office etc, but the opposite has happened - we print more than ever before - and that is mainly because it is so easy to print now, and we all think we can design good stuff because we have design software on our computers. Something similar will probably happen with 3D printing of fashion—the easier it is to access, the more we consume. So a big challenge is to make the 3D prints recyclable somehow and I would encourage ways to make sure more people feel empowered by such a system, designing stuff themselves, rather than only press the print button more often."

3D printing will impact intellectual-property—IP—rules. Designs will be easy to copy, distribute, and pirate. Public Knowledge, a Washington-based public interest group "working to defend citizens' rights in the emerging digital culture", refers to 3D printing as the "next great technological disruption". Campaigner Michael Weinberg wrote a paper called It Will be Awesome if They Don't Screw it Up, in which he says, "The ability to reproduce physical objects in small workshops and at home is potentially just as revolutionary as the ability to summon information from any source onto a computer screen." It could also conceivably put a lot of Chinese textile workers out of work.

Unfortunately, the revolution's not quite here yet and weirdly, given fashion's hunger for novelty and love of DIY aesthetics, like punk, there aren't many 3D patterns available for downloading right now. Though evangelical 3D printing file sharing website Thingiverse is actively trying to change that situation with their wearable print contest. It is also the best place to find patterns. The site's about page includes founder Zach Hoeken's mission statement, it details his "one central purpose: to help other people help themselves create an awesome world to live in." He hopes that, "someday we can create a world that surpasses even the wildest futures portrayed in science fiction." Going on, "I think the universe is and will continue to be completely rad." Sounds good, no? There's files for glasses, snow shoes, cufflinks, bow ties, and the like. Not many people reading this are likely to own their own 3D printer or go out and buy one, yet, but if you're a young designer frustrated by the production process, designing for the 3D printing boom might be a lot more fun than attempting to run a business.


TEXT: SUPER/COLLIDER

TAGGED: 3d Fashion