3D printing for fashion started more or less with the dress from Freedom of Creation, and by designer Iris van Herpen with her fantastic work. Also 3D printed shoes, stimulated by SLEM and Julia Koerner. The design studio Nervous System has created a new dress made from 3D printed petals that is not only for the catwalk for the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, Australia.

The dress is part of the Kinematics series, a system for 4D printing that creates a flexible structure. The garment is inspired by petals, feathers and scales, and consists of 2,191 interconnected elements. While the components are rigid, as a whole, the dress behaves as fluid as one made of normal textile. It is 3D printed in durable white nylon plastic by Selective Laser Sintering, which is dyed red. The dress is printed folded, so that it fits into the printer and comes out of ready to wear. It can be customised to the wearer’s body through a 3D scan, and there can be varied in direction, length and shape.

To show the movability of the dress, Nervous worked together with dancer Fhi B-Ado. The aim of the project is to make wearable and comfortable 3D printed clothes, though it is not yet affordable for most. The dress remains pricy for now, costing thousands of dollars to make.

Nervous System was founded in 2007 by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Luois-Rosenberg. The dress is the second of its kind, the first being commissioned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in March this year. The new dress was made for the exhibition “Out of Hand: Materializing the Digital”, which runs from 3 September 2016 until 25 June 2017.

Photos: Steve Marsel