3D printing and fashion continue to converge as naysayers within the fashion industry are finally realizing that this technology may actually have its place in the future of design. The custom aspects that 3D printing provides a future with perfectly fitting clothing, shoes, and accessories, as well as one-off designs tailored to a customer’s needs and desires. While 3D printing has not made any huge splashes within mainstream fashion quite yet, it has been the highlight of many runway shows as of late, with mesmerizing pieces being designed by even some of the world’s most notable designers.
Can we expect that 3D printed fashion will get closer to mainstream adoption anytime soon? It’s hard to say for sure, but one certain sign that the technology will play a role in the future of fashion is when we begin seeing it used by the future fashion designers of the world — fashion design students.
For one design school in Perugia, Italy, called NID – Nuovo Istituto Design, 3D printing recently played a large role in the school’s end-of-year fashion show, while also proving to students the worthiness of itself as a potential fabrication method for accessories.
Third year students, who were taking the Fashion Design course at NID, were tasked with putting together a fashion show, and many of these students elected to use 3D printing in order to create some very breathtaking accessories, ranging from neck-pieces, to corsets, and much more.
“The accessories were printed inside our school with MakerBot Replicator 2,” Matteo Agostini, Director at NID tells 3DPrint.com. “They were 3D modeled with Rhinoceros, and students took about a month to design and print all the parts of the accessories. The name of the whole collection is ‘3D drama’.”
The accessories, which you see pictured in this article, still remain in the “prototype” stage of development, so they are not yet available for sale. However, as you can see, the designs that these students came up with don’t simply lend themselves to proving that 3D printing can be used to create designs for the sake of doing so, but these designs are actually quite astonishing to look at, exhibiting that this technology certainly does have its place within the industry. The only question that remains is, ‘how long until we begin to see people walking the streets of Milan, Paris or New York, wearing designs that have been fabricated on 3D printers? What do you think? Discuss in the NID 3D Printed Fashion forum thread on 3DPB.com.
