On-demand digital textile printers Spoonflower announced today the addition of silk to their printable fabrics! Crepe de chine, to be specific.
Crepe de chine is a 100% silk with a slightly bumpy texture. (It’s not the ultra shiny stuff; that’s silk charmeuse.) The addition of crepe de chine silk makes six fabric choices including quilting cotton, organic sateen, organic knit, upholstery twill, linen-cotton blend canvas, and cotton lawn.
And don’t forget, you can sell your original silk textiles in the Spoonflower shop.
Feisty Elle’s environmentally conscious process is reflected in her use of organic forms and materials.
Leslie Yang is the founder and designer for Feisty Elle, a San Francisco-based company offering vibrant statement jewelry and accessories made from sustainable materials such as merino wool felt and bamboo ply.
How did you come across Ponoko?
You know, Ponoko and I have been working together for ages that I honestly don’t recall. But I do know that I had been keeping an eye on their services and was beyond stoked the day I found out they were lasercutting wool felt. I love felt and up until that point, had been needlefelting and wetfelting women’s accessories. I was making women’s accessories and other products by hand with some light sewing. Finding out about Ponoko was like entering into the 21st century!
When did you start making with Ponoko and what type of products do you make?
It started out with a project for the Ars Electronica festival in 2007. Fashion designer Magdalena Kohler and product designer Hanna Wiesener created ‘Gelsomina’, a Voice Knitting Machine. They hacked an old knitting machine so that the pattern “could be directly controlled by live user input.”
Fast forward a few years, and the Gelsomina project has evolved into an interdisciplinary fashion knit label: Trikoton. The Berlin based company offers knit-basics — sweater, vest, leggings, and a few accessories — which are constructed using a dot matrix pattern based on a customer’s audio sample.
Even though I wasn’t exactly impressed with fall’s runway offerings, I do love fashion — very much. So I’m excited to share this guest post from 3D printing expert Joris Peels about an innovative shoe company called United Nude. (Which, by the way, started off with a designer’s attempt to woo back his girlie with an architectural shoe. Certainly not the worst way to impress a lady.) ::
I’m a man so have never really spent much time lusting after high heels. Actually perhaps I have, but what I mean to say is that I’ve never wanted to own a pair. We once had opposite sex day in High School and one glimpse of me in my mom’s dress was enough for my little sister to run away crying and simultaneously end my cross-dressing days forever. That is until I walked into United Nude’s flagship store in Amsterdam.
The brand has been around since 2003, and the flagship store has been open for around a year. United Nude is inspired by design, architecture and materials. The brand was started by Rem D. Koolhaas (no not this Rem Koolhaas, a younger relative) and Galahad Clark (as in Clarks). And they make shoes that bring footwear kicking and screaming into this century.
I thought I would girlie up the blog a little bit with some CLOTHES.
Lasercutting has been a major theme in fashion for the past few seasons. And it isn’t at all this year (with the exception of one designer who I’ll be writing about later), so I’ll just get that out of the way. Digital textile printing, too, seems to have lost the imagination of designers. The novelty appeal, as Sarah Mower of Style.com writes, “quickly becomes cliché.” The passing of Alexander McQueen — whose spring collection was a digitally printed tour de force — likely affected designers’ decision to step back from digital prints.
The new NEW? There’s an obsession with asymmetry and militants in outer space. Knits are huge, and I mean literally. Texture is stuck-on rather than built-in. And anyone in mourning will find they have the best clothing selection ever. These trends and more, after the jump.
Small business is beautiful and booming at the Melbourne trade show.
I hadn’t heard of Life Instyle until I picked up on a tweet from Ponoko user Melanie Gray Augustin. She posted a couple of photos of her Life Instyle trade show booth which incorporated red, lasercut felt flowers she made with Ponoko. The result was a Japanese-chic space with her Kimono Reincarnate jewelry line displayed on graphic, cherry tree branches.
I was really impressed with Augustin’s booth and decided to check out more photos from Melbourne’s Life Instyle trade show that just wrapped up yesterday. What a gorgeous event! All of the booths are so creative and inviting!
Photographer Claudio Oyarce took lots of great photos that are up on the Life Instyle blog. Some shots of my favorite products after the jump.
There’s been a lot of buzz about ShirtsMyWay, the online service that lets users customize dress shirts for men. I’ve been really into menswear lately (One of my new side projects is trying to get my boyfriend to dress like Steve McQueen.) so I took a test drive of the site and e-interviewed ShirtsMyWay cofounder Peter Crawfurd.
• Where did the idea for your company come from?
Michael Yang, my business partner and fellow cofounder, spent a lot of time considering which business we should start and finally decided on transforming how people shop for dress shirts. We had both gotten tailored shirts made throughout Asia and thought there should be a way to make that available to more people. We also wanted to give the idea a new twist with a flexible design program.
• Men aren’t the first audience you think of when it comes to clothes. How have you approached mass-customization in fashion specifically for a male clientele?
Venice Buys Masks imports carnival masks from Venice. Among their extensive selection are a variety of highly detailed laser cut metal masks. According to their site they have over 700 different masks, sell to more than 42 countries, and are the exclusive distributor for the US and Canada for La Maschera del Galeone, the largest producer of masks in Venice. These metal masks start at around $80.
Don’t forget that we have a category devoted to laser cut work. It would be a good place to start if you’re looking for inspiration for a project.
This Swedish designer pushes two-dimensional patterns into three.
Textiles with cut out sections, sometimes with a three-dimensional effect, have become something of a trend in the last few years. More often than not, this type of product is laser cut, the cost of which has been falling rapidly recently. Adding to that, fabric is thin and cuts quickly and easily. If synthetic materials are used, the edge will fuse for a no-fray finish. This combination of factors have pushed textiles far beyond printed patterns.
Camilla Diedrich was one of the earlier people to work with textiles in this way, and has an impressive portfolio to show for it. I’ve chosen some of my favorites to show here. In addition to these cut out textiles, she also designs contemporary wallpaper which is available for sale through her online store.
We have covered several other examples of this trend including work by Nike, Tracy Kendall, and 3Form.
There have been some interesting explorations happening over at Shapeways. Just in time for SIGGRAPH 2010, these 3d printed digi-fabrics are most probably unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
Except maybe rubber. Apparently they behave just like a rubbery fabric – with strength under compression and a degree of flexibility when tension is applied. But they came out of a 3d printer! Amazing.
Check out the following video… I can’t wait to see how far people take this! Fancy-dress parties will never be the same again.
We found a few gems at SIGGRAPH last year; stay tuned for more goodies from the 2010 event.
RSS Feed
follow
like
see
watch
Submit
