3D Kimono, “WeAreAble” collection, 2020

Design by Ganit Goldstein

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As one of the two selected artists for the Re-FREAM 2020, a European funded Horizon 2020 project, Goldstein teamed up with Stratasys to achieve her mission of customized fashion design by combining craft methods with direct-to-textile 3D printing to produce a Japanese-style dress.

“Looking at the fashion world today, I want to introduce a new way of manufacturing – moving away from mass production to customized design,” says Goldstein. “3D printing has always offered the potential to personalize design in ways not possible before, but to truly create a new way to manufacture requires a new kind of textile. My goal is to create a new hybrid world of crafts and multi-color 3D printing – connecting past, new and future techniques to evolve fashion design.”

Goldstein spent a year in Japan to learn interweaving and was inspired by Asian craft embroidery and textile painting. Her kimono design follows the Japanese ‘ikat’ coloring method. While Japanese embroidery is the soul of the project, direct-to-textile multi-color 3D printing is at the heart of it. The kimono follows an algorithm that is composed on the 3D body scan and translated to the print surface during the printing process.

For the first time in 3D printed fashion, textiles can be leveraged as the skeleton of the garment. This allows for extra movement within the fabric, but also enables full gain between the capacity and material thickness that is printed on top of the fabric. This enables designers to bring unique designs to market that are not possible in any other way. It also challenges Stratasys to take the technology to places it’s not been before to support the emerging demand for direct-to-textile printing.

“In fashion, it’s important that we continually optimize and evolve to introduce new design forms,” says Goldstein. “During the past year, I experimented with numerous different fabrics and technologies to incorporate 3D printing within textiles. Achieving this milestone takes us away from 2D design and opens up a world of wearable 3D garments.”

Koerner and Goldstein leveraging Stratasys’ direct-to-textile printing technology exemplifies Re-FREAM’s goal of fully digitizing design workflows – from design through to production. In doing so, it demonstrates the possibility for localized manufacturing and mass customization – regarded by many as the future of fashion.

As Goldstein attests to in her video, direct-to-textile 3D printing has the potential to be a game-changer for the fashion industry. With the commercial interest in this innovative technique already at an advanced stage and pilot-testing underway, it may not be long before potential becomes reality.