3D PRINTING AT THE SERVICE OF HAUTE COUTURE?

The first steps of 3D printing in "haute couture" dressmaking have already a few years.

However, this 'high tech' new textile is only at its beginning.

If there is no strictly speaking technical function, it could be an alternative to the use of

textiles, sometimes more polluting than the 3D printing process.

The FOLIAGE 3D-printed dress of Iris Van Herpen, Dutch designer

3D Natives

On the occasion of the 2017 Haute Couture Fashion Week in Paris, the Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen presented her new collection whose parts were 3D-printed.

It's made with a mix of different innovative technologies, including 3D printing, with more traditional creation methods: alliance of tulle and plastic through a hybrid printing technique.

Thanks to this method, we forget the dress is made in part from plastic materials.

WHAT DIFFICULTIES IS THE FASHION TECH ENCOUNTERING TODAY?

What could harm or slow down the production of 3D printed clothing, is the polluting impact of its production associated with the use of chemical raw materials.

To reduce this impact on environment, the Fashion Tech is interested in more slow and local distribution models, and highlights the fact that cotton is for example an ecological heresy despite its 'natural' origin (high consumption of water)

To evolve peacefully with the tech Fashion, mentalities must change: consumers are either Pro Tech or Pro Ecology: combining both looks more promising and constructive.

A smart reflection was conducted during the Cop 21 around the topic "fashion for the climate". We must understand that synthetics are today increasingly the result of the recovery of the hand-me-down of oil. They are not necessarily the most polluting, they are also a way to recycle the waste of oil.

Technical innovation in textile engineering is a possible alternative to overconsumption of textiles, and to the collateral damage caused by agricultural exploitation of some raw materials, subjected to a very high demand on the part of the fashion industry.

If for some designers in Haute Couture, innovation is in the textile industry, we are not yet in the area of 3D printing in retail and fast fashion because the cost of production of this technology is still very high.

Customs are evolving slowly : the high-tech innovation still could reinvent fashion...

@JEANNE