Nervous System, a design and tech studio, has created a few different styles of ready-to-wear 3D-printed dresses; their most recent creation, called the “Kinematic Petals Dress,” is the ninth dress. This dress, unlike the others, uses interlocking petal-shaped pieces hinged together.
Many of the prior designs used interlocking triangles instead in order to allow the 3D-printed pieces to move like a piece of cloth; this resulted in them being transparent, though.
The triangle-hinged dresses look incredibly cool, but obviously, they can’t be worn on their own without violating some “indecent exposure” laws! In an interview with Wired, Nervous System’s Jessica Rosenkrantz said she wanted to create a dress inspired by petals, scales, and feathers — but she also wanted to address that secondary concern with the petal dress: “It’s also not see-through anymore. Which in my opinion is a strong benefit.”
The dresses cost upwards of $3k to create; the creation of each dress begins with a body scan of the person who’ll wear it, so the results fit perfectly. Although this is definitely a high fashion item and not affordable for most people, the eventual goal is to create something more accessible, says Rosenkrantz:
Our project has always been more about examining how 3-D printing or other digital manufacturing technologies could really shake up the way we make clothes.
Our ultimate goal is not to make luxurious couture 3-D printed dresses, but more to find a way to integrate these technologies into normal everyday clothes. Which we’re not anywhere close to doing … yet.
The designers at Nervous System have already conquered one important problem: making a dress that looks cool. These ones definitely do! Hope that “affordability” part gets sorted out, because I’d love to wear one of these.
(via Wired, images via Nervous System)
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