Innovative technology is popping up everywhere in the fashion industry. One new invention, 3D printers, is catching many designers, production managers, and consumers’ interest. Fashion designs can now be programmed into this machine with the end result of ‘printing’ out a finished product. Is this the future of fashion? Will there eventually be no manufacturing factories, oversees production, or even ready-to-wear stocked in bulk? Or will all garments be made individually to fit each person’s taste and specific measurements. Before the fashion industry blew up with demands of more production and convenience of buying from stores, people made clothes in their own homes. Families were typically clothed with garments made by someone in each household. 3D printing could be the start of turning back to the time of people producing their own fashions as Danit Peleg has done.

Danit has utilized this new innovative technology to create her own clothes right at home. This could potentially be something that exists in every home. Have an event tomorrow with nothing to wear? Just quickly print a one of kind outfit out; guaranteeing no awkward situation that someone else will be caught in the same thing. However, when I looked into 3D printed attire, I wasn’t all too pleased with the end result.

3D printing seems to pose a problem with sustainability, given that the clothes produced are not from natural fabrics, but of plastic instead. This issue needs to be addressed given the growing demand for a more sustainable fashion industry. One of the largest factors contributing to fashion’s harmful polluting impact on the environment is its use of synthetic fibers instead of natural ones that are biodegradable. The issue of materials used in 3D printing is one of the reasons why this method of production in the fashion industry hasn’t taken off much since its invention in the 1980s. However, this technology is continually being improved and will hopefully become apart of the sustainability movement by steering consumers away from fast fashion and bringing people back to ancestral roots of making clothes right at home.

References

Peleg, Danit. “Forget Shopping. Soon You’ll Download Your New Clothes” Youtube, Uploaded by TED, 8 Jan. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1oKe8OaPbk