Fashion of the Future: 3-D Printed Dress Is Now More Wearable Than Ever

   By SheSpeaksTeam  Jan 11, 2015

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Forward thinking fashion designers are tossing their needle and thread for something far more cutting edge. A design studio called Nervous System partnered with the printing service Shapeways to create a 3-D printed dress that is both wearable and flows like real fabric.

Dresses that were made by 3-D printers in the past were too rigid and statue-like, only allowing models to wear them standing up. Nervous System’s dress is different because it flows and sways with the model and she can actually sit down while wearing it.

The dress is made from little bricks of plastic that interlock in a way that allows for the movement, flow and wearability. Wired’s Joseph Flaherty describes the new process Nervous Systems employed to create the dress. He explains, “The bespoke software behind it, called Kinematics, combines origami techniques with novel approaches to 3-D printing, pushing the technology’s limits.”

Will this new 3-D printed dress find its way to your wardrobe anytime soon? The current cost of $3000 makes it a little too pricey for the average closet, add on the fact that it takes two days to make one dress and it seems more novelty than commodity. But Shapeways’ Carine Carmy explains to Wired that they are working on a way to lower the cost and make the dress more marketable. She says, “We’ve been working with Nervous and our community over the years to push the machines to their limits. From how densely we can pack the trays so you can print 1,000 products at once versus just one, to how long you need to run them so we can produce products more quickly, to how precise and detailed the prints can be so that you can design with micron precision.”

What do you think of this new 3-D printed dress design?

Would you be interested in adding something like this to your wardrobe?